CAIRO, August 6. /TASS/. Iraqi Airways is suspending flights to the Belarusian capital for one week, the airline said in a statement published on its Facebook page on Thursday.

"We drew attention of our dear passengers to the fact that flights travelling to the city of Minsk in Belarus are suspended for one week starting with August 5, 2021. At the same time, the upcoming flights to Iraq [from Belarus] remain on the schedule," the statement reads without specifying the reason behind the suspension of flights.

Earlier, the Telegram channel of Minsk International Airport reported that Iraqi Airways cancelled a Basra-Minsk flight which was supposed to land on Thursday. The reasons were also not specified.

Spokesperson for the Belarusian border control agency Anton Bychkovsky told TASS on Wednesday that Belarusian officers discovered a man "of oriental appearance" in severe condition near the Lithuanian border, he later died when receiving first aid. The man turned out to be an Iraqi national. On August 3, the border agency said that around 40 foreigners were "forcibly expelled to Belarus by representative of the neighboring side" in the past 23 hours.

The spokesman said that the people had signs of injuries of varying severity, they were in a suppressed moral and psychological state. In response, Lithuanian Defense Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs Arvydas Anusauskas and Agne Bilotaite noted that the reports of an Iraqi migrant who was found on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border and died after being viciously battered are a provocation invented in Minsk. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday accused Vilnius of not letting migrants in and "returning half-dead people to Belarus.".