The Iraqi government has facilitated another repatriation flight to bring back hundreds of migrants and refugees from Belarus, where they were stranded in poor conditions and cold weather. An Iraqi Airways plane left the capital Minsk on Saturday (4 December) to Erbil International Airport, an airport ten kilometres northwest of the city Erbil in Iraq's Kurdish region. On board the Boeing 747-400 were 419 people, including four children.
According to the Belarusian authorities, 2,000 migrants have already returned home in recent weeks. However, many people are still in an emergency reception centres in Bruzgi on the Polish border.
This was the sixth repatriation flight from Minsk for migrants and refugees stranded on the Belarus-Polish border, which included women and children, arriving from Minsk. The most recent previous flights brought around 400 migrants to international airports in Erbil and Baghdad.
