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Hundreds more migrants leave Belarus on Iraq-bound flight
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MOSCOW: Minsk’s airport said “more than 400 migrants who had traveled to Belarus seeking to cross the border into the EU flew home on an Iraqi Airways plane bound for the city of Irbil in northern Iraq.”
The EU imposed sanctions on Belarus after accusing it of flying in migrants, mostly from the Middle East, and pushing them to illegally cross the Polish border to manufacture a crisis, something Minsk denies.
Minsk airport authorities said “in a statement a Boeing 747-400 would fly 415 adults and four children on Saturday to Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.”
The airport’s website later listed the flight as having departed.
Iraqis who fled seeking economic opportunity and in some cases political asylum began returning to their country last month having failed to get into the EU via a route that people smugglers promised them would work.
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