SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A Kurdish doctor who lives in Poland called on people from the Kurdistan Region and Iraq to avoid the dangerous journey into the European Union through the Belarus-Poland border.
Dr. Arsalan Azzaddin said he was seeing migrants from Iraq and Syria being brought into a hospital in eastern Poland every day with hypothermia, pneumonia, broken bones and severe dehydration.
“I want them not to come. They could die,” Azzaddin told The Associated Press on Monday.
The doctor, originally from Erbil, also called on the Kurdish and Iraqi leaders to “save those people”.
“Kurds don’t deserve something like this,” said Azzaddin, who has lived in Poland for 40 years.
He added that his hospital in Bielsk Podlaski, located 30 kilometers from the border with Belarus, had lately been receiving two to five migrants a day needing urgent medical treatment.
Iraqis, especially Kurds, have made up a significant number of the estimated 4,000 migrants waiting in freezing forests and trying to cross into Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
On November 18, around 430 would-be migrants, mostly Kurds, touched down in Erbil on a flight from Minsk. The plane took off again for Baghdad where it deposited other returnees.
For months, EU countries have accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the migrant crisis to avenge sanctions imposed after he won a disputed 2020 election and authorities cracked down on mass protests against him.
Several airlines have already agreed to halt flights into the Belarusian capital for most passengers from countries including Iraq and Syria.
Humanitarian agencies say up to 13 migrants have died at the border, where many have suffered in a cold, damp forest with little food or water as a frigid winter sets in.
