(AFP) Lithuania on Monday said it had finished building a fence along its border with Belarus to fight illegal immigration which the West accuses Minsk of orchestrating.
Illegal immigration has soared in EU member Lithuania this year, with around 4,200 migrants mainly from the Middle East and Africa crossing the border from neighbouring Belarus.
The West has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of manipulating the migrant flows with its ally Russia as part of “hybrid” warfare, which Minsk denies.
A barrier four metres (13 feet) high and made up of barbed wire stretches across around 550 kilometres (342 miles) of the two countries’ shared border.
