Iraq to fly out around 200 migrants from Belarus: embassy in Moscow

Iraq's embassy in Moscow said on Tuesday that it will fly out around 200 people from Belarus, where thousands of migrants have camped on the Polish border in a crisis the West blames on Minsk.

"Around 200 people have got in touch with us. An evacuation flight will be organised on Thursday," a representative of the Iraqi embassy in Moscow said.

Many of the migrants that have camped on the Polish border are Iraqi citizens and Baghdad had earlier said it would organise repatriations on a "voluntary" basis.

Thousands of migrants from the Middle East, including many from Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, are camped out on the EU-Belarus border, creating a stand-off between the EU and US on one side and Belarus and its ally Russia on the other.

Western countries accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's government of engineering the crisis by encouraging migrants to come to Belarus and then taking them to the border.

Regular air links between Baghdad and Minsk have been suspended since August, while Belarusian diplomatic missions in Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, have been closed for more than a week.

On Friday, Turkey banned citizens of Syria, Iraq and Yemen from flying from its airports to Belarus, while private Syrian carrier Cham Wings Airlines on Saturday halted flights to Minsk.