Polish security forces arrested around 100 migrants as they attempted to cross the border into Belarus overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, the Polish Defense Ministry said.
"A group of about a hundred migrants has been arrested by the Polish services," the ministry said, accusing the Belarusians of having "forced the migrants to throw stones at the Polish soldiers in order to divert their attention".
The hope of returning to Europe
"The attempt to cross the border took place a few hundred meters away," near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne, the ministry said. Video released by the Defense Ministry shows Polish soldiers surrounding a large group of migrants crouching on the ground at night in a forest near a barbed wire fence.
A few thousand migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have been camping for days in freezing temperatures along the Polish border on the Belarus side in the hope of being able to enter the EU.
The West accuses Minsk of having orchestrated this influx since the summer, in response to Western sanctions against Belarus after the repression in 2020 of a historic opposition movement.
Warsaw, as well as the two other European neighbors of Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, refuse to accept these thousands of migrants.
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