Poland-Belarus border: Violence erupts as Polish guards fire water cannon on
There were chaotic scenes on the Bruzgi-Kuźnica border crossing, where crowds of migrants could be seen breaking up concrete blocks and gathering tree branches to throw toward the Polish side.
Loud bangs rang out over the crowds and a dense cloud of smoke hung overhead. Belarusian state media BeITA reported that the water cannons used by Polish forces sprayed a yellow liquid that caused burning, and that people were suffocating and feeling sick from the smoke. A CNN team was hit by the water fired by Polish guards.
According to BelTA, the deputy head of the Belarusian Armed Forces’ Department of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection and Ecology, Igor Malyk, told reporters that Polish security forces had used “toxic chemicals” against refugees.
“Today we have witnessed how the Polish security forces on the Belarusian-Polish border used special means containing toxic irritating chemicals against refugees, including women and children,” Malyk said.
Women and children who, just a day before, had been camped out in tents near the border fence had moved back, and men, many of them voicing their anger about being left in limbo in awful conditions, were amassing in the most dramatic clashes to date. “We are fighting to stay alive,” one man told CNN.
The Polish Border Guard said Tuesday that migrants camped out near the Bruzgi-Kuźnica checkpoint were behaving “aggressively,” throwing stones and various objects at the Polish services. “In order to prevent illegal border crossing, water cannons were used against aggressive foreigners,” the security agency said on Twitter.
The spokesperson for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday about the clashes, congratulating Polish forces for successfully repelling the “first wave of attacks on the border.”
BelTA reported “an aggravation of the situation” on the border on Tuesday, as migrants try “by all means to get to Poland” and Polish authorities respond with tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon, “pouring water on people in the cold.”
“People say they are tired of waiting and are ready to break through,” according to BeITA.
‘We’re going back to Iraq’
Anton Bychkovsky, a spokesman for Belarus’s State Border Guard Committee, told BelTA that the agency was launching an investigation into the “incident” on Tuesday.
It’s unclear what sparked Tuesday’s confrontations but there is a growing sense of frustration among migrants that Europe is not welcoming them. They’re now facing conditions the United Nations has called “catastrophic,” suffering from hunger and hypothermia camped out in flimsy tents in makeshift camps at the border.
Rumors have been swirling over the past 48 hours in the camps that the Polish government might open the border and…
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