English Section

New incident at Belarus border as flare gun fired at Polish guards: officials

01.02.2022 14:30
Belarusian soldiers have fired a flare gun across their country's border with Poland, with the flare landing near a Polish checkpoint in a new incident stoking tensions between the two neighbours over migrants, officials said on Tuesday.
Soldiers from Polands Territorial Army patrol the border with Belarus near the Polish village of Kodeń.
Soldiers from Poland's Territorial Army patrol the border with Belarus near the Polish village of Kodeń.PAP/Wojtek Jargiło

Poland’s Border Guard agency announced the news on Twitter, calling the incident a "fresh provocation," the niezalezna.pl website reported.

The Border Guard’s spokeswoman Anna Michalska said the incident occurred on Monday night near the Polish border village of Białowieża.

“The Belarusian soldiers fired a flare gun and the flare fell on the Polish side, where a  permanent checkpoint of the Polish forces is situated,” she added.

“These are fresh provocations - if they are firing flare guns, we’re not sure if they will fire blank or live rounds next,” Michalska told reporters.

“Such actions shouldn’t happen at the border because they stoke emotions,” she said, as quoted by niezalezna.pl.

Meanwhile, 39 people attempted to cross illegally into Poland from Belarus over the past 24 hours, the Border Guard agency said on Tuesday.    

Standoff over migrants

So far this year, there have been 1,024 illegal attempts to enter Poland from Belarus. Over the course of 2021, the number of such attempts totalled 39,700, according to the agency’s data.

To stave off an influx of migrants, Poland has introduced new, stricter border protection rules and is building a 5.5-metre-high, 180-kilometre-long protective wall along its frontier with Belarus.

The protracted standoff at the Polish-Belarusian border escalated last autumn, with the European Union, NATO and the United States accusing Belarus' strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating a migrant crisis in retaliation for Western sanctions against his regime.

(pm/gs)

Source: niezalezna.pl