Two flights carrying more than 600 Iraqi Kurds who were stranded along the Belarus-Poland border landed in Erbil in the early hours of Friday.
According to the Iraqi Transport Ministry, 608 Iraqi Kurdish migrants have been evacuated in the past 24 hours.
“Two charter flights successfully carried out the evacuation from Minsk Airport to Erbil and Baghdad airports, after obtaining official approvals from the Iraqi and Belarusian authorities,” said Abbas Omran, the Director-General of the Iraqi Transport Company.
The first repatriation flight had taken off on November 18, carrying 430 Iraqi citizens.
Thousands of migrants are still stuck along the border as weather conditions deteriorate and Polish security forces continue to block the entrance of asylum seekers into European Union’s borders.
Another flight is expected to take off late Saturday according to Kurdish Regional Government’s media advisor Halgurd Salayi. Salayi, who spoke to Rudaw, expects the return of 400 to 430 migrants in the fourth flight.
