On Sunday, four bodies were discovered at the border between Poland and Belarus, one of which belonged to an Iraqi woman, according to officials from both countries, following Warsaw's declaration of a state of emergency at its borders due to the ongoing influx of migrants. The Polish border guard also reported finding eight exhausted migrants in a swampy area near the border. Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have crossed the border between Belarus and the European Union into Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland in recent months. The EU has suspicions that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is orchestrating the influx of migrants in response to European sanctions imposed on him.
A Polish border guard account on Twitter stated: "On Sunday, three bodies were found in the border area with Belarus." Polish border guard spokesperson Anna Michalska told the Polish news agency "Pap" that the bodies were found in three different locations, and "it is likely that they are illegal migrants." Additionally, a fourth body of an Iraqi woman was found on the Belarusian side of the border on Sunday. The state-run Belta agency quoted Belarusian border guard official Yevgeny Omis stating: "We found the body of a non-Slavic woman a meter away from the border." According to him, "clear evidence" suggests that the woman's body was "pulled" from the Polish side of the border. Her husband claimed that Polish border guards forcibly took them barefoot and under threat to the Belarusian side.
The agency reported that next to the woman’s body were three Iraqi children, aged between 5 and 7 years, alive on part of the Polish-Belarusian border. An investigation has been opened from the Belarusian side, and representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have been invited to the site, according to the same source. Earlier on Sunday, a tweet from the Polish border guard noted that the guards spent several hours working to rescue migrants stranded in a swamp area across the Supraśl River at the border with Belarus. The Polish border guard stated: "Eight migrants were rescued (5 men and 3 women), seven of whom were taken to the hospital for treatment," adding that paramedics and police participated in the operation.
The border guards indicated that Saturday was a "busy" day, revealing 324 attempts to cross illegally from Belarus into Poland. In response to the influx of migrants and recent tensions with Belarus, Poland declared a state of emergency for 30 days at its borders in early September and began constructing a barbed wire fence to curb migration. In early August, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ordered an investigation into the death of an Iraqi man at the border with Lithuania, who was reportedly beaten according to Minsk.
