BERLIN —
German police said Monday they detained hundreds of migrants at the border with
Poland over the last three days, many who the
EU believes were prompted by Belarus to cross into the bloc.
اضافة اعلان
The number of migrants from Iraq,
Yemen or
Syria crossing from the Polish border into Germany reached a “new weekend high” in the first days of October, federal police said.
Thousands of migrants have been trying to cross from
Belarus into European Union members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in recent weeks, an unprecedented number for the region.
Brussels accuses Belarus of deliberately orchestrating the influx in retaliation against EU sanctions over the Moscow-backed regime’s crackdown on dissent.
Germany shares a border of over 460km with Poland.
Police in the eastern German state of Brandenburg reported that 251 people sought to slip into the country since Friday.
Their colleagues in Saxony state a little further south along the Polish border said they caught 76 migrants seeking to travel in.
Officers in the northeastern state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state meanwhile uncovered 55 migrants.
During a visit to Warsaw in September, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel appealed to Belarus to help migrants instead of trying to send them across the border into the EU, branding these attempts “hybrid attacks”.
Poland has sent thousands of troops and built a razor-wire fence at the border with Belarus to halt the influx.
Non-governmental groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis for migrants crossing the border as temperatures begin to dip and have asked for access to provide medical assistance.
Germany was at loggerheads with Poland after the 2015 refugee crisis when Warsaw refused to take its share of migrants under an EU-wide scheme.
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