Latvian authorities have discovered an underground tunnel through which migrants could enter the EU country from neighbouring Belarus, Interior Minister J\u0101nis Dombrava reported in Riga on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Dombrava said the secret passage was discovered by border guards, the military and police near the closed Silene border crossing.<\/p>\n
“It is the first tunnel of this kind in Latvia,” Dombrava said, according to Latvian media reports. He ordered a search for additional underground passages using electronic equipment. In recent weeks, secret tunnels under the border between Belarus and Lithuania had already been discovered.<\/p>\n
The tunnel, located about 10 metres from the border fence, was discovered while authorities were trying to reconstruct the route taken by a group of migrants who had been detained after illegally crossing the border. According to the Latvian border guard service, 15 people were arrested.<\/p>\n
Until now, migrants had only attempted to enter the EU country by scaling the border fence. According to a border guard spokesman, they had used various tools for this, including metal cutters and makeshift ladders made from branches and sticks.<\/p>\n
Latvia, like Lithuania and Poland, has repeatedly accused authoritarian-ruled Belarus of deliberately and systematically bringing migrants from crisis regions to the EU’s external border. In response, Latvia strengthened border security and built a border fence.<\/p>\n
The country, which is also a NATO member, has launched a new operation to secure its eastern border under which drones will be deployed more extensively to detect illegal crossings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latvian authorities have discovered an underground tunnel through which migrants could enter the EU country from neighbouring Belarus,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32,1974,1598,252,2057,2058,1601],"class_list":["post-5018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-belarus","tag-border-fence","tag-border-guard","tag-border-guards","tag-interior-ministry","tag-security-officers","tag-state-border"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}