Migrants
46 dead, 16 hospitalized after trailer of migrants found
Forty-six people were found dead and 16 others were taken to hospitals after a tractor-trailer rig containing suspected migrants was found Monday on a remote back road in southwest San Antonio, officials said.
A city worker at the scene was alerted to the situation by a cry for help shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, Police Chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the trailer, he said.
Of the 16 taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses, 12 were adults and four were children, said Fire Chief Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the trailer, he said.
Also read: Morocco: 18 migrants dead in stampede to enter Melilla
Three people were taken into custody, but it was unclear if they were absolutely connected with human trafficking, McManus said.
Those in the trailer were part of a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, and the investigation was being led by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, McManus said.
Those in the trailer were in a presumed migrant smuggling attempt in South Texas, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the information had not been authorized for public release.
It may be the deadliest tragedy among thousands who have died attempting to cross the U.S. border from Mexico in recent decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.
Also read: Global efforts must be enhanced to save lives, reduce risks of migrants: Shahriar Alam
Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., migrants were led through more dangerous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.
Heat poses a serious danger, particularly when temperatures can rise severely inside vehicles. Weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy Monday, but temperatures approached 100 degrees.
Bangladesh thanks Kuwait for providing free vaccines to Bangladeshi expats
Bangladesh has expressed gratitude to the government of Kuwait for providing free vaccines and treatments to Bangladeshi expatriates living in Kuwait during the Covid-19 pandemic and for extending humanitarian support for the Rohingyas.
Outgoing Ambassador of Kuwait Adel Mohammed AH Hayat met Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday.
During the meeting, Momen mentioned that Kuwait can recruit more medical professionals including nurse, medical technicians from Bangladesh, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The foreign minister appreciated the ambassador for his hard work and sincere efforts in strengthening bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Kuwait.
Read: Kuwait can recruit more medical professionals from Bangladesh: Shahriar Alam
He highlighted that Bangladesh and Kuwait enjoy excellent bilateral relations in the fields of manpower, trade and commerce, defense and energy sectors.
The envoy expressed his gratitude to the foreign minister for the cooperation and support he received during his tenure in Bangladesh.
He expressed hope that in the coming days, economic cooperation will be further strengthened for the mutual benefit of two countries.
Dhaka: Inadequate efforts for climate migrants may lead to global security risk
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said the international community is not doing enough for millions of ‘climate migrants’ who often get subjected to various forms of security risks and exploitations.
“Climate-induced displacement could lead to a global security risk in today’s interconnected world,” Momen warned while speaking at a roundtable on “Environment of Peace: Securing a just and peaceful transition in a new era of risk.”
He emphasized on the significance of creating global awareness on the climate-security nexus and an enforcement mechanism to address the challenges.
The event was organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on the sidelines of the Stokholm+50 international meeting on Friday.
Momen stressed that the international community should share the burden of climate migrants’ rehabilitation, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday.
The Foreign Minister also held a bilateral meeting with the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation Matilda Ernkrans and discussed how to enhance cooperation on climate change, education and other areas.
He urged the Swedish Minister to put pressure on Myanmar for bringing back the forcibly displaced Rohingyas with safety and dignity.
READ: Dhaka calls for more IOM role in helping climate migrants
Momen also underlined that the business-as-usual approach with Myanmar will not make any progress.
Global efforts must be enhanced to save lives, reduce risks of migrants: Shahriar Alam
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam has said global efforts must be enhanced to save lives and reduce risks and vulnerabilities of migrants during their migratory journey, including those caught up in situations of crisis.
He was delivering national statement at the general debate of the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) at the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Shahriar Alam urged transit and destination countries not to forcibly return migrants under any circumstances.
Also read:It's a priority for IFAD to invest in Bangladesh, says its regional director
7 migrants die, 280 rescued off Italian island of Lampedusa
Seven migrants have died of apparent hypothermia on a packed wooden boat, the Italian coast guard said Tuesday after rescuing about 280 others off the coast of Lampedusa.
Three people were dead when the coast guard arrived for the rescue in rough waters, and a further four died while being transported to Lampedusa. Most of the migrants were from Egypt and Bangladesh.
Two coast guard boats conducted the rescue while a boat from Italy’s financial police stood by during “an operation made more complex by the rough sea conditions,” the coast guard said.
Italian authorities said the 20-meter (65-foot) boat was in Tunisian waters when the distress call first came in, but that they were unable to locate the boat. It was later found in the Italian search-and-rescue area, the coast guard said.
The NGO Alarm Phone, which forwards rescue calls from smugglers’ boats packed with migrants to authorities, tweeted that it took Italian rescue boats six hours to reach the migrants in distress.
“Their deaths could have been prevented,” the group said.
READ: Immigrants welcome Afghan refugees, inspired by own journeys
Arrivals in Italy this year are significantly higher than the past two winters, totaling 2,051 through early Tuesday, compared with 872 in the same period last year and 835 a year before that. Arrivals typically peak in the summer months.
The International Organization for Migration has marked 2021 as the deadliest for the central Mediterranean crossing route since 2018, with at least 1,315 dead. Bodies aren’t often recovered and the deaths are presumed from the accounts of survivors. More than 23,383 migrants are missing and presumed dead in the Mediterranean since 2014, 80% of those in the central Mediterranean.
READ: 53 die in horror crash of truck smuggling migrants in Mexico
Virtual concert to address concerns of migrants on Saturday
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Bangladesh will host a virtual ‘Concert for Migrants’ to mark International Migrants Day that falls on December 18 and help raise awareness about safe migration.
The concert organised for the second year running, aims to connect with migrants and their communities and promote safe migration through information and entertainment.
The first ‘Concert for Migrants’ hosted in 2020, reached more than four million viewers joining in virtually from more than 20 countries.
The virtual concert will enable some of the 7.4 million plus Bangladeshi migrants working abroad to connect and watch the concert from around the world.
They can expect to be entertained by popular performers, including Kumar Bishwajit, Fazlur Rahman Babu, Shironamhin, Luipa, Asif Akbar, Kuddus Boyati, Nandita, Pritom Ahmed and Masha Islam.
READ: Rock icon James to headline Brandmyth’s winter concert in city
The concert will mostly feature some folk and contemporary music which has great appeal among migrants, returnees, their families and the general community.
Ranked sixth highest in the world, Bangladesh’s migrant workers play a critical role in the country’s development. Notably, Bangladesh currently receives the eighth highest remittances in the world, and significantly since 1976, migrants have sent back over USD 249 billion in remittances.
IOM Bangladesh’s officer-in-charge, Fathima Nusrath Ghazzali said, "On this International Migrants Day, we take the opportunity to honour Bangladeshi migrants' contributions at home and abroad through the ‘Concert for Migrants’.”
Ghazzali said the concert will inform and entertain listeners on the value of safe, orderly and regular migration. "I invite everyone to watch the concert, which features some of Bangladesh's most prominent musicians."
Ahead of the concert, Kumar Bishwajit shared an important video message: "Please don't fall into a trap and be a victim of human trafficking while migrating abroad. Taking an informed decision is the best way to migrate abroad safely."
"Migration is one of the most important sectors for Bangladesh, but still many migrants continue to go abroad irregularly,” said actor and singer Fazlur Rahman Babu.
The 'Concert for Migrants' is initiated under the European Union-funded project 'Bangladesh: Sustainable Reintegration and Improved Migration Governance (Prottasha)' that supports the government to achieve sustainable development goals 10.7 to facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed policies.
READ: 'Concert against violence' held to protest communal attacks
The ‘Concert for Migrants’ is organised in collaboration with Jamuna Television and will be streamed live on 18 December on IOMBangladesh’s Facebook page and telecast on Jamuna Television from 11pm Bangladesh time (GMT+6).
53 migrants dead, 54 injured in truck crash in south Mexico
A cargo truck jammed with people who appeared to be Central American migrants rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway in southern Mexico on Thursday, killing at least 53 people and injuring dozens more, authorities reported.
The federal Attorney General’s Office said the preliminary estimate lists 53 dead, with three of the injured in critical condition.
Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals.
The crash occurred on a highway leading toward the Chiapas state capital. Photos from the scene showed victims strewn across the pavement and inside the truck’s freight compartment.
Video footage showed the dead and injured migrants jumbled into a pile inside the collapsed freight container, with some struggling to extract themselves from the weight of bodies piled atop them.
Also read: Camped in Calais, migrants renew resolve to try for England
Later, rescue workers arranged the dead in rows of white sheets, side by side, on the asphalt.
The victims appeared to be immigrants from Central America, though their nationalities had not yet been confirmed. Moreno reported that some of the survivors said they were from the neighboring country of Guatemala.
Sitting on the pavement beside the overturned trailer, survivor Celso Pacheco of Guatemala said the truck felt like it was speeding and then seemed to lose control under the weight of the migrants inside.
Pacheco said there were migrants from Guatemala and Honduras aboard and estimated there were eight to 10 young children. He said he was trying to reach the United States, but now he expected to be deported to Guatemala.
Rescue workers tried to excavate survivors from a pile of humanity in the flipped trailer, separating the injured from the dead. Dazed wounded stumbled among the wreckage.
Marco Antonio Sánchez, director of the Chiapas Firefighter Institute, said ambulances raced victims to three hospitals, carrying three to four injured each. When there weren’t enough ambulances they loaded them into pickup trucks, he said.
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei wrote on Twitter: “I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas state, and I express my solidarity for the victims' families, to whom we will offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriation.”
Moreno said that it appeared that speed and the weight of the truck’s human cargo may have caused it to tip over, and that as the vehicle toppled over it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. There was a curve in the road near the accident scene that may have contributed to the crash.
That meant at least 107 people were crowed into the vehicle. It is not unusual for freight trucks in Mexico to be carrying so many people in migrant-smuggling operations in southern Mexico.
But rescue workers who first arrived at the scene and who were not authorized to be quoted by name said that even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and had fled for fear of being detained by immigration agents.
One paramedic said some of those who fled into surrounding neighborhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape.
The truck had originally been a closed freight module of the kind used to transport perishable goods. The container was smashed open by the force of the impact. It was unclear if the driver survived.
Also read: France calls for European aid after 27 migrant deaths at sea
Those who spoke to survivors said the migrants told of boarding the truck in Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, and of paying between $2,500 and $3,500 to be transported to Mexico's central state of Puebla. Once there, they would presumably have contracted with another set of migrant smugglers to take them to the U.S. border.
In recent months, Mexican authorities have tried to block migrants from walking in large groups toward the U.S. border, but the clandestine and illicit flow of migrant smuggling has continued.
In October, in one of the largest busts in recent memory, authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas found an 652 mainly Central American migrants jammed into a convoy of six freight trucks heading toward the U.S. border.
Irineo Mujica, an activist who is leading a march of a couple of hundred migrants who have been walking for more almost 1 1/2 months across southern Mexico, blamed Mexico's policies of cracking down on migrant caravans for the disaster.
Mujica and his group had almost reached the outskirts of Mexico City on Thursday, after weeks of dealing with National Guard officers who tried to block the march. Mujica said the group would stop Thursday and offer prayers for the dead migrants.
“These policies that kill us, that murder us, is what leads to this type of tragedy,” Mujica said.
In fact, they are two very different groups. Caravans generally attract migrants who don't have the thousands of dollars needed to pay migrant smugglers.
Migrants involved in serious accidents are often allowed to stay in Mexico at least temporarily because they are considered witnesses to and victims of a crime, and later Thursday Mexico's National Immigration Institute said it would offer the humanitarian visas to the survivors.
The agency also said the Mexican government would help identify the dead and cover funeral costs or repatriation of their remains.
Mass deaths of migrants are something that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been desperate to avoid, even as his administration has accepted requests from the U.S. government to stem the flow of migrants moving north. “It is very painful,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
Camped in Calais, migrants renew resolve to try for England
At the makeshift camps in France near Calais and Dunkirk, migrants are digging in, waiting for their chance to make a dash across the English Channel despite the deaths of at least 27 people this week when their boat sank a few miles (kilometers) from the French coast.
Police have stepped up patrols in recent days and the weather has worsened, making this a bad time to attempt a crossing. But most migrants say the tragedy won’t prevent them from climbing into a flimsy inflatable boat packed with up to 50 people in hopes of reaching Britain.
“I don’t afraid of anything,” a 22-year-old from Iran who identified himself only as Kawa said in halting English. “Water? If we die … sorry to say this but we already died. Nobody accepts us anywhere. We’re useful. Useless, sorry,” he said, correcting himself. “Just look at these people.”
Kawa and his father spent the past six years in the Denmark, where they say they never felt free because they constantly had to report to police and other authorities. Now they want to reach England, and eventually Canada, because “they are good to Iranians.”
They are among a group of about 150 young Kurdish men and a smattering of families camped Saturday on a disused railroad line in hopes of escaping the damp ground below. Alongside a collection of incongruously bright red, green and blue tents near Dunkirk, they pull hoods over their heads, hunch shoulders inside winter jackets and huddle next to small fires to stay warm as an early winter chill grips northern Europe. The smell of burning plastic hangs in the air as the migrants use anything they can find as fuel.
Read: France calls for European aid after 27 migrant deaths at sea
The coast around Calais has long been the jumping-off point for migrants anxious to get to the U.K. But this week’s disaster underscores the combination of dreams and despair that drives people to camp in drizzling rain with temperatures hovering around 40 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) for the chance to risk their lives at sea.
But first they have to pay smugglers about 2,500 pounds ($3,300) for a seat in a boat.
Ari, who like other migrants declined to give his last name for fear of being deported if he is caught, is a physics teacher from Iraq who left home because he couldn’t find work.
He says he is frightened about the crossing — but the chance for a better life is worth the risk.
“Everyone is scared But everyone here — they die (a little) every day," he said, giving a subtle nod to the camp littered with rotting banana peels, soggy shoes and tents abandoned by migrants who have already left for England.
Wednesday’s tragedy came amid a jump in the number of migrants trying to cross the channel in inflatables and other small craft after the COVID-19 pandemic limited air and ship travel and Britain’s departure from the European Union curtailed cooperation with neighboring countries in processing asylum-seekers and other migrants.
More than 23,000 people have already entered the U.K. on small boats this year, up from 8,500 last year and just 300 in 2018, according to data compiled by Parliament.
Despite this increase, the number of people applying for asylum in Britain is still relatively low compared with other European countries. Migrants heading for Britain usually do so because of family, historical or geopolitical reasons, said Nando Sigona, chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham.
“So people in Calais are there because they want to come here,” he said.
Britain has criticized France for not doing enough to stop the boats before they are launched, but migrants say police have become more active since the deaths.
So they are simply waiting for things to calm down and the weather to improve.
Amanj, 20, a Kurdish activist from Iran, says he has no choice but to press on. His father was recently jailed and the family doesn’t know what happened to him. Amanj fears he could be next.
“Maybe I would die if I was in Iran, you know. Maybe I was … killed by police with a gun, Nobody knows," he said. “If not today, maybe tomorrow you die anyway."
Read: Migrant boat capsizes in English Channel; at least 31 dead
Fifteen miles (25 kilometers) to the west at a camp outside Calais, migrants from Sudan kick a soccer ball around a patch of bare ground and hang laundry on a fence in hopes it will dry in the weak sunshine.
Patrick yearns to reach Liverpool and study political science. He says he has tried to smuggle himself onto a vehicle heading for Britain every day for the past six months. Now he’s ready to try the boats, if he can find the money.
“I dream of England,'' he said “I know that some people died in the sea, but I will try by sea or by any other way.”
In Calais, aid groups have taken over a warehouse where they collect supplies like sleeping bags, food and firewood that they distribute to migrants at designated spots around the city.
Opie Cook, 27, is sorting vegetables for a vat of salad after taking a leave of absence from her job at HP to help the migrants.
“It’s sad that it has taken such a tragedy for this to be talked about again,’’ she said.
Back in the camps, men take off their shoes and nudge their feet as close to the campfires as possible, trying to dry them off and stay warm.
Amid the despair, there is also determination.
Ari, the teacher from Iraq, traveled first to Belarus before taking a train through Poland, then through Germany to reach the channel coast.
His destination is Bournemouth, where he has family. And he intends to make it.
“We want to get free,’’ he says. “That’s why we’re here.’’
France calls for European aid after 27 migrant deaths at sea
Helicopters buzzed above the waves and vessels were already scouring the cold waters when French maritime rescue volunteer Charles Devos added his boat to the frantic search for a flimsy migrant craft that foundered in the English Channel, killing at least 27.
What Devos found was gruesome. But not, he later sorrowfully acknowledged, wholly unexpected. With migrants often setting off by the hundreds in flotillas of unseaworthy and overloaded vessels into the busy shipping lane crisscrossed by hulking freighters, and frequently beset by treacherous weather, waves and currents, Devos had long feared that tragedy would ensue.
That came this week, with the deadliest migration accident to date on the dangerous stretch of sea that separates France and Britain.
“We picked up six floating bodies. We passed by an inflatable craft that was deflated. The little bit of air remaining kept it afloat,” Devos told reporters.
“I’d been somewhat expecting it because I’d say, ‘It’s going to end with a drama,’” he said.
Also read: Migrant boat capsizes in English Channel; at least 31 dead
France and Britain appealed Thursday for European assistance, promised stepped-up efforts to combat people-smuggling networks and also traded blame and barbs in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly sinking that shone a light on the scale and complexity of Europe’s migration problems.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent French President Emmanuel Macron and the EU leadership a letter Thursday proposing joint sea, air and land patrols starting as soon as next week. France has resisted the idea. Johnson also proposed an agreement allowing Britain to send back migrants to France.
Macron appealed to neighboring European countries to do more to stop illegal migration into France, saying that when migrants reach French shores with hopes of heading on to Britain “it is already too late.”
Macron said France is deploying army drones as part of stepped-up efforts to patrol its northern coastline and help rescue migrants at sea. But he also said that a greater collective effort is needed, referring to France as a “transit country" for Britain-bound migrants.
Also read: Italian Coast Guard rescues 550 migrants from stormy seas
“We need to strengthen cooperation with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, but also the British and the (European) Commission,” he said on a visit to Croatia. “We need stronger European cooperation.”
Migration is an explosive issue in Europe, where leaders often accuse one another of not doing enough to either prevent migrants from entering their countries or from continuing on to other nations.
Ministers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain and EU officials will meet on Sunday to discuss increasing efforts to crack down on migrant-smuggling networks, Macron's government announced.
They will convene in Calais, one of the French coastal towns where migrants gather, looking for ways to cross to the British coast that is visible from France on clear days. Seaside communities on both sides of the channel were reeling Thursday from the sinking's horrific toll.
“This was unfortunately something that could have been foreseen, a scenario of horror that we’d feared and dreaded,” said Ludovic Hochart, a police union official in Calais.
Across the channel, in the British port of Dover, small business owner Paula Elliot said: “It’s dreadful that people have lost their lives."
“The vessels that they take, are traveling in, are not fit for purpose,” she said. "They probably don’t understand how arduous the journey is going to be, and especially at this time of year, it’s so much colder than in the summer.”
Devos, the rescue volunteer, told reporters in comments broadcast by coastal radio Delta FM that the flimsy craft used by migrants for the crossing are increasingly overloaded, with as many as 50 people aboard.
Macron described the dead in Wednesday's sinking as "victims of the worst system, that of smugglers and human traffickers.”
France has never had so many officers mobilized against illegal migration and its commitment is “total,” he said.
Ever-increasing numbers of people fleeing conflict or poverty in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Eritrea or elsewhere are risking the perilous journey from France, hoping to win asylum or find better opportunities in Britain.
The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020. Shipwrecks on the scale of that seen Wednesday are not uncommon in the Mediterranean Sea, where just this year about 1,600 people have died or gone missing, according to U.N. estimates.
The French prosecutors’ office tasked with investigating the sinking said the dead included 17 men, seven women and two boys and one girl thought to be teenagers. Magistrates were investigating potential charges of homicide, unintentional wounding, assisting illegal migration and criminal conspiracy, the prosecutors’ office said.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said children and pregnant women were among the dead. Two survivors from the sinking were treated for hypothermia. One is Iraqi, the other Somali, Darmanin said. He said authorities are working to determine the victims’ nationalities.
Destabilized by shock and sadness, aid workers and Calais residents held a silent vigil Thursday night in the port city to honor the dead, huddling beneath a cold rain and lighting candles in their memory.
Macron's government vowed to bring those responsible for the tragedy to justice, piling pressure on investigators. Darmanin announced the arrests of five alleged smugglers who he said are suspected of being linked to the sinking. He gave no details. The prosecutors' office investigating the deaths confirmed five arrests since Wednesday but said they didn't appear to be linked to its probe.
Darmanin said a suspected smuggler arrested overnight was driving a vehicle registered in Germany and had bought inflatable boats there.
He said criminal groups in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain are behind people-smuggling networks. He called on those countries to cooperate better against smugglers, saying they don’t always respond fully to French judicial requests for information.
“Britain and France must work together. We must no longer be, in effect, the only ones able to fight the smugglers,” the minister said.
In their immediate response to the sinking, French authorities initially gave differing figures on the number of dead, from at least 27 to 31. The figure that Darmanin used Thursday morning on RTL radio was 27.
The minister also took a swipe at British government migration policies, saying France expels more people living in the country without legal permission than the U.K. Illegal migration from France's northern shores to Britain has long been a source of tension between the two countries, even as their police forces work together to try to stop crossings. The issue is often used by politicians on both sides pushing an anti-migration agenda.
Darmanin also suggested that by hiring people living in the country illegally, British employers are encouraging illegal migration to English shores.
“English employers use this labor to make the things that the English manufacture and consume," he said. “We say ‘reform your labor market.’”
U.K. officials, meanwhile, criticize France for rejecting their offer of British police and border officers to conduct joint patrols along the channel coast with French police.
Macron advocated an immediate funding boost for the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, according to his office.
“France will not allow the Channel to become a cemetery,” Macron said.
Migrants aided by Belarus try to storm border into Poland
Hundreds if not thousands of migrants sought to storm the border from Belarus into Poland on Monday, cutting razor wire fences and using branches to try and climb over them. The siege escalated a crisis along the European Union's eastern border that has been simmering for months.
Poland's interior ministry said it had rebuffed the illegal invasion and claimed the situation was under control. The Defense Ministry posted a video showing an armed Polish officer using a chemical spray through a fence at men who were trying to cut the razor wire. Some migrants threw objects at police. Video footage from Belarusian media showed people using long wooden poles or branches to try to get past a border fence as police helicopters circled overhead.
Defense Ministry video taken later Monday showed the migrants settling in for the night by the border, having put up scores of tents and cooking meals.
“A coordinated attempt to massively enter the territory of the Republic of Poland by migrants used by Belarus for the hybrid attacks against Poland has just begun,” a spokesman for Poland's security forces, Stanislaw Zaryn, said in a statement.
Noting that it's also NATO's eastern border, Zaryn stressed that the “large groups of migrants ... are fully controlled by the Belarusian security services and army.” He accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of acting to destabilize Poland and other EU countries to pressure the bloc into dropping its sanctions on Minsk. Those sanctions were put into place after Belarus cracked down brutally on democracy protests.
Read: Over 2,000 migrants march out of southern city in Mexico
Piotr Mueller, Poland's government spokesperson, said 3,000 to 4,000 migrants were next to the Polish border on the Belarusian side.
Polish border officials said the border crossing in Kuznica, in the northeast, will be closed early Tuesday.
There was no way to independently verify what was happening. Journalists have limited ability to operate in Belarus and a state of emergency in Poland is keeping reporters and human rights workers out of the border area.
The massing of people at the border appeared to rev up the crisis that has being going on for months in which the autocratic regime of Belarus has encouraged migrants from the Mideast and elsewhere to illegally enter the European Union, at first through Lithuania and Latvia and now primarily through Poland.
Anton Bychkovsky, spokesman for Belarus’ State Border Guard Committee, told The Associated Press that the migrants at the border are seeking to “exercise their right to apply for refugee status in the EU.” Bychkovsky insisted they “are not a security threat.”
But the massive group was viewed as a threat by Poland and other European countries, including Germany — the main destination for many. Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, told reporters Monday that “the Belarusian regime is acting as a human trafficker.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on the bloc's 27 nations to approve extended sanctions on the Belarusian authorities “responsible for this hybrid attack.”
She said two top EU officials — EU Commission vice president Margaritis Schinas and EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell — will travel to the main countries of origin for the migrants to “ensure that they act to prevent their own nationals from falling into the trap set by the Belarusian authorities.”
The EU said it hoped that Poland would finally accept help from Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, a step that Poland’s ruling nationalists have so far refused to do. Frontex would not comment Monday on the border situation.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price expressed concern “with disturbing images and reports emanating from the Belarus-Poland border” and stressed that the U.S. “strongly condemns the Lukashenko regime’s political exploitation and coercion of vulnerable people and the regime’s callous and inhumane facilitation of irregular migration flows across its borders.”
He said the U.S. was calling on “the regime to immediately halt its campaign of orchestrating and coercing irregular migrant flows across its borders into Europe" and warned that if the regime “refuses to respect its international obligations and commitments ... we will continue to pressure Lukashenko and will not lessen our calls for accountability."
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Twitter that more than 12,000 soldiers have been deployed to the border and a volunteer Territorial Defense force was put on alert. He also posted video footage of what appeared to be a large group of migrants in Belarus, near Kuznica.
Polish ministers held an emergency meeting on the border crisis, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki writing on Facebook that Poland's border is “sacred” and “not just a line on the map."
Read: Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention
Poland's deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski held talks with Iraqi charge d'affaires Hussein al-Safi on ways of ending the migration crisis and thanked Iraq for having Belarus close its consulates in Baghdad and Irbil that were giving tourist visas to migrants.
Meanwhile, in Poland's EU neighbor Lithuania, officials were preparing for the possibility of a similar incursion, with the Interior Ministry proposing to declare an emergency situation.
“We are getting ready for all possible scenarios,” said Rustamas Liubajevas, the head of Lithuania's border guards.
Since the summer, Poland and Lithuania have seen thousands of migrants from the Mideast and Africa trying to cross into the EU. Poland has sought to block the attempts or send those they catch back into Belarus.
Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich told the AP that the Moscow-backed Lukashenko regime seemed to be trying to use the migrants “to scare” the EU.
“The largest attack of migrants on EU borders is taking place three days after Belarus and Russia signed a new agreement on military cooperation. The Kremlin is at least aware of the details of what’s happening,” Karbalevich said.