Sharjah24 – Reuters: Despite the risk of getting stranded in Europe or perishing on the way there, scores of people from a single town in Iraq's Kurdish region have opted to be smuggled into European Union countries via Belarus, local smugglers and officials say.
One local Iraqi Kurdish smuggler said he had arranged the trip for about 200 people wishing to leave the town of Shiladze and the surrounding area, first legally by plane to the Belarusian capital Minsk, then illegally overland.
He said his business took off in the late spring of this year when the number of migrants trying to enter the EU from Belarus surged, though admitted it was upsetting that people had died trying to cross into EU countries.
"But they want to leave. What else can they do?" he said, asking not to be named.
An Iraqi migrant died last month after crossing into Poland from Belarus, one of a number of recent deaths in the border area coinciding with a surge in illegal migration across the EU's eastern frontier.
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