LONDON: A 1-year-old Syrian child has been found dead in a forest in Poland near the EU country’s border with Belarus.
The child, thought to be the youngest victim of the ongoing crisis on Europe’s northeastern frontier, was found by the Polish Emergency Medical Team, or PCPM, after it was called out to assist another injured migrant.
“Around 2:26 am we received a report that at least one person needed medical assistance,” the NGO tweeted. “When we arrived on the spot, it turned out that three people were injured. They had been in the forest for 1.5 months.”
As well as a young man with severe abdominal pain, PCPM said it found a young Syrian couple and their dead infant.
“The man had a lacerated wound to his arm, and the woman had a stab wound to her lower leg,” PCPM added. “Their one-year-old child died in the forest.”
The cause of the child’s death has yet to be established, but as many as 13 people are known to have died in the area recently, most due to exposure, as harsh conditions set in with winter approaching.
Maciej Szczesnowicz, a leader of the local Tatar Muslim community, told Reuters: “It is hard. It pains me that people went to another country ... and met such a fate here in Poland.”
Thousands of people, many from the Middle East, have been caught on the Poland-Belarus border.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is accused of inviting them to cross into Eastern Europe and the Baltic via his country in retaliation for EU sanctions placed on Minsk following a series of alleged human rights violations after elections earlier this year.
