SOKOLKA
\nThe Polish army on Thursday said it had detained a group of about 100 migrants who crossed the Belarus border during the night, accusing Belarusian forces of leading the operation.
\nThe incident came as Belarus, which has said it wants to defuse the crisis, prepared a first repatriation flight for migrants to Iraq that will have between 200 and 300 people on board.
\nThousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, are camped out or staying close to the Poland-Belarus border in dire conditions aiming to cross into the European Union, in a crisis that began over the summer.
\nThe EU says Belarus engineered the crisis in retaliation for sanctions on the ex-Soviet country. Minsk and its main ally Russia have rejected the charges and have criticized the EU for not taking in the migrants seeking to cross over.
\nIn the latest border incident, the Polish defense ministry said that Belarusian forces had first carried out reconnaissance and \u201cmost likely\u201d damaged the barbed wire fence along the border.
\n\u201cThen the Belarusians forced the migrants to throw stones at Polish soldiers to distract them. The attempt to cross the border took place several hundred meters away,\u201d it said.
\n\u201cA group of about 100 migrants was detained,\u201d it said, adding that the incident happened near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne.
\n\u201cBelarusian special forces led yesterday\u2019s attack,\u201d it said.
\nVideo footage released by the defense ministry appeared to show Polish soldiers surrounding a large group of migrants crouched down in a wooded area at night next to some barbed wire.
\nBelarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades, has spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the crisis twice in recent days.
\nLukashenko\u2019s press service on Wednesday said the Belarus leader and Merkel \u201cagreed that the problem as a whole will be brought up to the level of Belarus and the EU.
\n\u201cRelevant officials, to be determined from both sides, will immediately start negotiations to resolve the existing problems,\u201d it said.
\nMerkel\u2019s spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German leader had \u201cunderlined the need to provide humanitarian care and return options for the affected people.\u201d
\nAn EU spokesman said there were \u201ctechnical talks\u201d and urged Minsk to grant humanitarian access to the border area.
\nAid groups say at least 11 migrants have died since the crisis began in the summer.
\nThey have called for a de-escalation and a humanitarian response to the problem.
\nPoland estimates there are between 3,000 and 4,000 migrants along the entire border, with the largest group staying close to the shut down Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing.
\nThe Belarusian Red Cross says around 1,000 migrants are staying in a warehouse near that crossing and 800 more are camped nearby.
\nBelarus said it was preparing a voluntary repatriation flight that is planned to take off from Minsk at around 1045 GMT on Thursday and will fly first to Irbil and then to Baghdad.
\nSeveral airlines have also said they are trying to stop would-be migrants from traveling to Belarus in the first place.
\nBut officials have warned that the crisis may take time to defuse.
\nPolish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Wednesday: \u201cWe have to prepare for the fact that the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border will not be resolved quickly.
\n\u201cWe have to prepare for months or even years,\u201d he told Poland\u2019s Radio Jedynka.
\nIn an interview with AFP, Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU border agency Frontex, also said that the EU should prepare for more \u201chybrid\u201d migrant crises engineered for political ends.
\n\u201cWe have to prepare ourselves for situations like this which can arise quite quickly,\u201d he said, comparing the current standoff to one on the Greece-Turkey border last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SOKOLKA The Polish army on Thursday said it had detained a group of about 100 migrants who crossed the Belarus border during the night, accusing Belarusian forces of leading the operation. The incident came as Belarus, which has said it wants to defuse the crisis, prepared a first repatriation flight for migrants to Iraq that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[306,307,305],"class_list":{"0":"post-228200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world","7":"tag-belarus","8":"tag-migrants","9":"tag-poland"},"yoast_head":"\n