Ten flights have been chartered by Iraq since November 18, in order to repatriate migrants stranded at the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Article written by
Posted
Reading time : 1 min.
Baghdad has repatriated in two months nearly 4,000 Iraqi migrants stranded at the borders of Belarus with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday January 16. Since November 18, the Iraqi government has organized a total of “ten flights from Baghdad to Belarus”, declared Fouad Hussein, head of Iraqi diplomacy, during a press briefing with his Lithuanian counterpart Gabrielius Landsbergis.
In details, “over the past two months (…), 3,817 Iraqi migrants have been repatriated from Belarus and 112 from Lithuania”, then told AFP Ahmed Al-Sahaf, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Planes usually first land in Iraqi Kurdistan, where many migrants originate, before continuing on to Baghdad.
According to Ahmed Al-Saha, a number of Iraqi migrants are still stuck in Belarus, but “the difficult weather and the complex nature of the environment do not allow the rescuers to determine their numbers”. During his visit to Iraq, the Lithuanian Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who later met with Prime Minister Moustafa Al-Kazimi, said he wanted “bringing new ideas on ways to cooperate” with Iraq.
Since last summer, thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and in particular from Iraq, have crossed or tried to cross, from Belarus, the eastern border of the European Union in Latvia, Lithuania or Poland. . The West accuses the regime of Alexander Lukashenko of having caused this crisis by luring migrants to the European border by issuing visas and with the promise of easy passage, in retaliation for EU sanctions – a charge dismissed by Minsk.