Turkey curbs flights to Belarus to ease migrant crisis

Polish police guard Poland/Belarus border near Kuznica, Poland, in this photograph released by the Police, November 12, 2021. Policja Podlaska/Handout via REUTERS

BRUSSELS/ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey banned Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi citizens from flights to Minsk on Friday, potentially closing off one of the main routes that the EU says Belarus has used to fly in migrants by the thousand to engineer a humanitarian crisis on its frontier.

Thousands of migrants from the Middle East are sheltering in freezing conditions in the woods on the border between Belarus and EU states Poland and Lithuania, which are refusing to let them cross. Some have already died and there are fears for the safety of the rest as bitter winter conditions settle in.