MOSCOW, November 15. /TASS/. The Embassy of Iraq in Russia is registering Iraqi migrants who are on the Belarusian-Polish border and voluntarily want to return to their homeland, Iraqi Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed al-Sahaf reported on Monday.

"The Iraqi ministry continues to undertake steps aimed at the voluntary repatriation of Iraqi migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border. For this purpose, we are coordinating our actions with the local authorities," the Iraqi News Agency (INA) cites Ahmed al-Sahaf.

The Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman noted that "the embassy of Iraq in Moscow continues to register Iraqi migrants wishing to return to their homeland by a special flight, which will depart from Belarus on Thursday." He confirmed that the ministry "issues transit passports and exchanges information on this matter with partners and friends of Iraq."According to Ahmed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi ministry has information about 571 Iraqis situated near the Polish-Belarusian border. However, he added that "it is impossible to count the exact number of Iraqi citizens in this region due to the large length of the border and the unwillingness of individual migrants to return to Iraq."

The migration crisis on Belarus’ borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants began to flock to 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. EU member-states have blamed Minsk for the intentional escalation of the crisis and called for more sanctions. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that in this situation the responsibility rested squarely on Western countries, whose policies had forced people to flee from war.