As the migrant crisis persisted, the Border Guard said in a tweet that on Tuesday night, a group of 35 people, mainly Iraqi nationals, tried to breach the Polish border near the village of Czeremcha.
The group was detained, the Border Guard added.
The agency’s spokeswoman, Anna Michalska, told reporters that the migrants trying to cross into Poland near Czeremcha were being aided by Belarusian officials.
“Polish border forces were being blinded by laser beams and stroboscopic lights, and pelted with rocks and pieces of wood,” Michalska said.
“The group of migrants managed to briefly cross into Polish territory before being detained and escorted back to the border,” she added.
Elsewhere, there were incidents in the village of Kuźnica, where stones were thrown at the Polish checkpoint, and near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne, where Belarusian officials flashed a laser beam at a Polish border patrol from a car, Michalska told a news conference.
Meanwhile, a man was found dead on Tuesday in the woods near the village of Narewka, some nine kilometres from the border, the state PAP news agency reported.
It quoted police as saying that a backpack and a Nigerian passport had been lying near the body.
Overall, there were 51 illegal attempts to enter Poland from Belarus during the past 24 hours, the Border Guard reported.
Border tensions
Since the start of the year, there have been almost 40,000 illegal crossing attempts from Belarus, including 8,900 in November alone, the Border Guard agency's data showed.
In addition to new, stricter border protection rules, Poland is set to build a 5.5-metre-high, 180-kilometre-long protective wall along the frontier.
The protracted migrant crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border escalated last month, with Poland, the European Union and its member states, as well as NATO and the United States accusing Belarus' strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the standoff in retaliation for Western sanctions against his regime.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP