A flight carrying about 400 migrants arrived in the Kurdish capital at 5:00 am.
“We will return another 400 people who have been stranded on [the] Belarus-Poland border tomorrow [Saturday],” Jotiar Adil, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), said in a tweet late Friday.
Another flight, which is expected to land in the upcoming hours, will carry about 430 Iraqi and Kurdish migrants, spokesperson for Iraq’s Foreign Ministry Ahmed al-Sahaf said on Friday.
At least 8,000 Kurds have traveled to Belarus with the help of Kurdish smugglers, attempting to gain access to western Europe, which has fortified itself against the wave of migration and accused Minsk of luring desperate migrants to the border in protest of sanctions.
The migrants, stuck on the frontier between Polish and Belarusian forces, were fenced in with no food or water and fearing for their lives as temperatures drop.
“It is all a tragedy … the police of that country [Belarus] uses you only, its nothing else,” a Kurdish migrant from Ranya told Rudaw’s Ranja Jamal at Erbil International Airport as his little daughter surrounded him.
Another migrant spoke of the violence faced on the border.
“The Lithuanian police electrocuted me for an hour and 20 minutes. The Belarus police put their foot on my friend and drowned him in the water,” Burhan Mohammed told Rudaw’s Payam Sabrast from the airport.
Another friend of Mohammed’s was taken by the Lithuanian forces. “We don’t know what happened to that friend until this minute,” he said.
The exodus of Kurds is part of a migrant crisis that has led European nations to fortify their borders. Tensions are high between Belarus and Europe. Minsk has been accused of exploiting the migrants and using them as a pressure tactic against the European Union in answer to sanctions. Poland has refused to take in any migrants, instead calling on them to return home. At least 13 people have died on the Belarus-Poland border.
Another 27 people, who are believed to be mostly Kurdish, including three children, died in the deadliest migrant boat tragedy between France and the United Kingdom on Wednesday night. Baran Hamadamin, 24, who was on her way to reunite with her fiancé in the UK was among those who drowned.
