Hundreds of migrants arrive back in Iraq on flight from Belarus

Hundreds of Iraqis returned home Thursday on an Iraqi Airways flight from Belarus.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Hundreds of Iraqis returned home Thursday on an Iraqi Airways flight from Belarus, where thousands of migrants have camped on the Polish border for weeks hoping to enter the EU.

It was the first repatriation flight of migrants -- many of them fleeing war and poverty-wracked Middle Eastern countries -- since the Poland-Belarus border crisis began.

A total of 431 people were aboard the Boeing 747, said a spokesman for the government of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, where many of the repatriated Iraqis came from.

Iraq s government which organised the flight has said the repatriation was voluntary.

The flight landed in Arbil and later flew on to Baghdad but most of the passengers disembarked in the Iraqi Kurdish capital.

Some hid their faces, so as not to be identified on local TV images as they stepped down from the plane.

The smile of one woman, however, was clear as she entered the terminal carrying an infant.

Many of the children and adults wore thick winter coats and hoods, images from a regional Kurdish TV station showed.

Some carried their belongings in backpacks or plastic bags. Inside the terminal of Arbil airport, blue-suited workers administered Covid tests to the arrivals.

The returnees appeared to have mixed feelings.

"I spent more than $4,000 to get to Belarus," a resident of the Kurdish capital said on arrival, asking not to be named.

"The situation was very bad, we had to eat grass and leaves from the trees, and it was cold," he told AFP.

A resident of the northern region of Sinjar said: "The situation over there was difficult, but here it s worse. It s the hard conditions (in Iraq) that pushed us to emigrate."

Among about 30 returning Iraqis who flew on to Baghdad was Majed Hassan, 23, from Basra in the south who said he had been "hit" by Belarusian and Polish security forces.

He had paid $15,000 to be trafficked to Europe via Russia.

Hassan said he would not advise people to follow his example to flee hardship in Iraq, but added that "if the situation continues like this, I ll think about trying again".

- Border standoff -

The situation on the border created a stand-off between the European Union and US on one side and Belarus and its ally Russia on the other, with the migrants stuck in the middle and living in freezing temperatures.

At least 11 have lost their lives at the border.

Western countries accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko s government of engineering the crisis by encouraging migrants -- many of them Iraqi Kurds -- to travel to Belarus and then taking them to the border.

The EU alleges this is revenge for sanctions imposed last year after a heavy crackdown on the opposition.

Lukashenko s spokeswoman Natalya Eismont said Thursday there were about 7,000 migrants in the country, with about 2,000 in dire conditions on the border.

Poland has responded to the influx by sending thousands of soldiers to the frontier and implementing a state of emergency there, as well as hastily building a razor-wire fence.

Regular air links between Baghdad and Minsk have been suspended since August, when hundreds of migrants, mostly Iraqis, converged on the Belarus border with Lithuania before the focus turned to Poland.