OREANDA-NEWS. More than 300 Iraqis have flown from Minsk to Baghdad on export flights organized by the Iraqi authorities over the past two days. The planes arrived empty from Kabul to Minsk and took 80 Iraqi citizens on August 9, and 240 on August 10. They had arrived in Belarus earlier with the intention of going further to the EU countries, but the attempt failed.

The body of a man who died while trying to cross the border from Belarus to Lithuania has also been delivered to Iraq. Due to the influx of illegal refugees from Belarus and the crisis situation at the border, Latvia has introduced a state of emergency in the border areas since Wednesday, August 11. Earlier, Lithuania took a similar step.

As the migrants told reporters, the Belarusian border guards did not prevent them from crossing the border, but on the Lithuanian side, the border guards met them with dogs, shot them in the air and forced them to turn back.

More than 4 thousand illegal immigrants have crossed the border of Lithuania from Belarus since the beginning of 2021. These are mainly refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and African countries. Most of them have made their way to the territory of Lithuania in the last two months. The situation with illegal migrants has become so serious that in early July, the Lithuanian authorities announced the introduction of an extreme situation regime, as well as their intention to erect a fence on the border with Belarus.

Following Lithuania, control at the border with Belarus was strengthened by Latvia, where a law restricting the rights of illegal migrants was adopted in July. Due to the complicated situation in the three border areas of Latvia and in the Daugavpils city, an emergency mode has been introduced since August 11.