BERLIN, November 15. /TASS/. The number of illegal migrants arriving in Germany via Belarus and Poland has eased somewhat in recent days, the German news agency DPA reports, quoting German law enforcement agencies.
According to preliminary reports, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 225 refugees arrived in Germany illegally from Belarus and Poland. In the same period last week, the DPA says, the police identified 400 illegal border crossings by persons who had traveled through Belarus. The German authorities say strict measures taken by the Polish border guards are one of the reasons for a decline in the influx of illegal migrants entering Germany via Belarus and Poland.
Since the beginning of this year, Germany’s federal police have registered more than 9,300 illegal migrants from Belarus and Poland. On November 1-11, 1,488 refugees had entered Germany via these two countries. Most of them are Iraqis, Syrians and Afghans.
The migration crisis on the Belarusian borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants began to flock in since the beginning of this year, went into high gear on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border on the Belarusian side and tried to cross into Poland. In an attempt to storm the border they broke a barbed wire fence. There are about 2,000 migrants in the improvised camp at the moment. The EU countries have blamed Minsk for the intentional escalation of the crisis and called for more sanctions. Lukashenko said that in this situation the responsibility rested squarely on the Western countries, whose policies had forced people to flee from war.