Two Iraqi migrants freeze to death in southern Bulgaria border

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Two Iraqi migrants were found frozen to death on Friday in the southern border of Bulgaria, police officials said.

The bodies were pounded by blizzards in a mountain range of Strandzha located in Bulgaria’s southeastern border with Turkey, AFP reported referring to a police statement.

The villagers discovered the bodies of two men aged 28 and 35, according to the police report.

The statement did not mention which part of Iraq, ethnic or religious group the victims belonged.

The Strandzha is Bulgaria’s only frontier with Turkey, covering a distance of 200 kilometers (120 miles).

The border had been closed off by barbed-wire fencing, a measure taken to prevent migrants from entering Bulgaria, a European Union (EU) member explained.

It is not the first time migrants froze to death in the area. On Monday, a Somali woman was also found dead in the same region.

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly from war-torn Syria, fled to the EU which triggered a migrant crisis in the area.

The influx pushed the EU member states to reach an agreement with Turkey to prevent the migrants crossing the continent, especially from the Black Sea.

The agreement helped greatly decrease the number of migrants entering the region.

Greece experienced the largest influx of migrants. The country was often used as a passageway for people seeking to enter other European countries.

Among the migrants, there were thousands of Kurdish people from Syria and the Kurdistan Region seeking asylum in the continent, mostly notably in Germany.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany