Belarus authorities have cleared the two main migrant camps at the border with Poland, bringing the remaining migrants that had been camped in the woods to nearby warehouses, the Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Thursday.

The move, if confirmed, could be a major development in the crisis at the border, which has spiralled in recent weeks into a major East-West confrontation, as migrants made desperate attempts to cross the border and some froze to death in the forest.

European countries accuse Belarus of having deliberately created the crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to cross the borders illegally into Poland and Lithuania. Minsk denies fomenting it.

Belarus said earlier on Thursday it had proposed a plan to resolve the migrant crisis, which would see the EU take in 2,000 people while Minsk would send another 5,000 back home.

There was no immediate response from the EU to that plan, which came with caveats and was announced just shortly after the European Commission said there could be no negotiation with Belarus over the plight of the migrants.

Earlier on Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis checked in at a Minsk airport for flight back to Iraq, the first repatriation flight of its kind since August.

TodayNG