Since the beginning of the month, a total of 1,488 illegal entries related to Belarus had been recorded, most of them along the border with Poland, the police said. The figure since the start of the year is 9,329.

The crossings have increased sharply since the summer, with most of the migrants originating from Iraq, with considerable numbers also from Syria and Afghanistan.

The European Union has accused Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately encouraging the flow of migrants by air to Minsk and then sending them on under guard to his country’s borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Thousands are now penned in and stranded along those borders – which also mark the EU’s external border – after the national authorities increased security in the frontier area to prevent entry.

Addressing the German parliament in Berlin on Thursday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas assured Poland of Europe’s solidarity in the crisis.

He accused Lukashenko of playing an unscrupulous game with human lives. “The problem is Lukashenko and Belarus and the regime that exists there,” he said, adding that Poland deserved European solidarity.