Polish rescuers find body of Syrian citizen. Belarus services pushed them into river, fellow migrant claims
On Wednesday, Polish rescuers pulled out the body of a 19-year-old Syrian migrant from the Buh River, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reports.
The prosecutor’s office is studying the circumstances of the young man’s death. On Tuesday morning, Polish border guards came across a 22-year-old Syrian citizen near the town of Woroblin. According to preliminary findings by the police, he and his companion attempted to cross the Buh from the territory of Belarus. None of them could swim, Andrzej Fiolek, Spokesman for the Lublin police commander-in-chief, stressed. If the Syrian migrant’s testimony is anything to go by, it is Belarusian officers who forcibly pushed him (and allegedly, the other man who was later found dead) into the river.
“The identity [of the dead] was confirmed by another young man with whom they had tried to illegally cross the Buh the day before. The documents were found on the body,” Fiolek said.
On October 20, Polish border guards barred about 600 migrants from illegally crossing the Belarus-EU border; 19 irregular migrants were arrested (16 from Iraq, 2 from india, 2 from Syria). 11,300 attempts to illegally enter the country have been recorded by the Polish side over the past month; 22,900 – this year.
On October 8, a patrol of Polish servicemen was fired at from the Belarusian side of the border; blanks were probably used, Anna Michalska, spokeswoman for the Polish Border Guard, said. On the same day, a group of migrants who gathered on the Belarusian side tried to forcibly break through the border.
As reported earlier, in response to Western sanctions imposed on the regime in 2021, Alyaksandr Lukashenka threatened to loosen control over the flow of migrants and banned substances (even nuclear materials) at the border with the European Union. Unfortunately, he is sticking to his word, and the scale of the hybrid aggression waged by the Belarusian authorities has resulted in the growth of the flow of irregular migration.
belsat.eu
