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Women with children try to illegally enter Poland from Belarus, Polish official says

According to the statement, the attempt to cross the border had been thwarted

WARSAW, November 12. /TASS/. A group of women with children tried to illegally cross the border between Belarus and Poland pressured by the Belarusian military, police in Poland's Podlaskie Voivodeship said in a statement on Friday.

"The Belarusian military used force to push 35 people into Poland at about 8:00 pm yesterday. The group mostly consisted of women and children," Polish Television quoted police spokesman Tomasz Krupa as saying. "The Belarusian army pushed those people onto a barbed-wire fence," he claimed.

According to the spokesman, the attempt to cross the border was thwarted, all migrants stayed on the Belarusian side. There currently are about 200 people in the area. Krupa said that a group of about 100 migrants had gathered near the Polowce border crossing. "They haven't tried to cross the border. Several dozen police officers, border guards and service members interfered from the Polish side," he said.

Tensions along the Belarusian-Polish border ran high on November 8 when several thousand migrants arrived to the Kuznica border crossing. They cut barbed-wire fences and tried to cross the border but failed. Later, about 800 migrants set up a tent camp there. Another 2,000 to 4,000 people, according to Poland's estimates, scattered along the border, made sporadic attempts to enter the country in groups of several dozen people. More than 20,000 law enforcement officers have been deployed to the border to ensure security.