The first patch of the stranded at the Belarusian-Polish border arrives in Erbil
ARK News… The first batch of migrants stranded on the Belarusian-Polish border arrived Thursday evening at Erbil airport, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, via Minsk airport, after intense diplomatic efforts.
This evacuation took place on an "exceptional" flight after the humanitarian crisis of migrants at the Belarus-EU border intensified in the past few weeks.
At the same time, Belarus announced earlier that day that there are about 7,000 migrants on its territory, about 2,000 of them in camps on the border with Poland.
Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, are camping at the border in what the West sees as a response by the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka to the sanctions imposed on him after his suppression of protests last year.
According to the spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, Jotyar Adel, the first batch includes 431 people, 90 percent of whom are residents of the region.
617
