MOSCOW, Nov 19 (Agencies): The Belarusian border force said Thursday it had cleared a makeshift migrant camp at the border with Poland that had held around 2,000 people, with the occupants relocated to a reception centre nearby.
"On November 18, all the refugees at the makeshift camp at the Belarus-Poland border, near the Brouzgui crossing point, have been moved, on a voluntary basis, to a logistics centre," the border guards said via the Telegram messaging service. Pictures of the camp looking abandoned were sent out.
Over 1,000 people had already moved to the centre, a vast hangar close to the border, on Tuesday night.
But according to Minsk, around 800 others had remained outside even as temperatures dropped below freezing, spending the night in tents or around campfires.
These last had now also moved because weather conditions had deteriorated further, the border guard said, adding that at the centre the migrants had received "hot meals, warm clothes and basic necessities".
The Polish border force confirmed the evacuation of the camp, which had been set up in a wooded area not far from the border post of Brouzgui.
Meanwhile, seven migrants were killed and eight others injured early on Friday when their vehicle crashed into a toll station on a highway in northern Greece, police said.
A preliminary investigation indicated that the driver, who was being treated in hospital, was transporting the 14 migrants inland, police said. The nationalities of the passengers were not immediately known.
Earlier, concerns have been raised about the pace of Northern Ireland's involvement in the UK government's scheme to rehome Afghan refugees.
Families have now been resettled in England, Scotland and Wales but no one has come to Northern Ireland.
The Stormont Executive said plans to rehome 840 people from Afghanistan were at an "advanced stage".
Alliance MP for North Down, Stephen Farry, said there are "huge frustrations" around the scheme.
Mr Farry told BBC Radio Foyle he feared the plight of Afghan refugees "had very much fallen down the political agenda" since the fall of Kabul in August.
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