Lithuania Plans To Construct Container Towns For 40,000 Illegal Migrants - Border Service

Lithuania Plans to Construct Container Towns for 40,000 Illegal Migrants - Border Service

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd July, 2021) Lithuania intends to construct container towns for 40,000 illegal migrants near the border with Belarus, Rustamas Liubajevas, the State Border Guard Service commander, said.

"It is difficult to predict the situation on the border. We do not know how many houses we will need... We must be ready for any developments. The worst scenario � 40,000 migrants," Liubajevas told Lithuanian news portal Delfi.

According to the Svencionys District authorities, 16 hectares (around 40 acres) of land in the village of Augustavas were allocated for the container town's construction.

Currently, 484 illegal migrants are accommodated in a center for the registration of foreigners in the Svencionys District, as the news outlet reported.

The country also plans to set up another settlement for migrants, in the village of Medininkai in the Vilnius District, by August 5, and plans to buy up to 10,000 container houses for this, Vidas Macaitis, the deputy State Border Guard Service commander, said.

On July 2, Lithuania declared an emergency over the influx of illegal migrants from Belarus, many of them Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians. Lithuanian politicians and several leading EU officials have accused the Belarusian government of facilitating the movement of migrants across the border with Lithuania as retaliation for the European Union's decision to impose political and economic sanctions on Minsk. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that his country would not contain the flow of illegal migrants to the EU, as it does not have enough capacity due to the sanctions imposed on Minsk.

According to the last data, since the beginning of the year, Lithuania detained over 2,400 illegal migrants on the border with Belarus � 30 times more than in 2020.