Iraqi migrants caught in border crisis in Belarus fly home

By ZEINA KARAM, DARIA LITVINOVA and YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of Iraqis have returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union in a repatriation that follows more than a week of tensions at Poland’s eastern border, where thousands of migrants were stuck in a cold and soggy forest. Most of the Iraqis who returned are from the Kurdistan region, where young men, women and children got off the flight at Irbil’s airport. But many others remain in Belarus, and state media there said they have moved into a heated warehouse not far from the border, emptying out a makeshift camp. But the Polish Defense Ministry posted video showing a few hundred people still near an official crossing, where tensions flared this week.