(Reuters) Latvian border guards turned back dozens of migrants into Belarus overnight under a new state of emergency designed to stem a flow of arrivals the European Union says is orchestrated by Minsk.
At daybreak on Wednesday some 30 migrants — including women and toddlers — started a camp fire to warm up after a night of walking through fields in northern Belarus to the frontier.
The pushback, witnessed by Reuters, occurred just hours after Latvia declared an emergency to prevent illegal migrants, mostly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, from crossing into the EU state from Belarus.
A young migrant in a black hoodie who gave his name as Rawa said the group were Kurds who had flown from Iraq to Istanbul in Turkey and then on to the Belarusian capital Minsk.
