Turkey banned Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi citizens from flights to Minsk on Friday, potentially closing off one of the routes used by migrants that the EU says have been flown in by Belarus to create a deliberate humanitarian crisis on its frontier.

Thousands of migrants, mainly from West Asia, are sheltering in freezing conditions in the woods on the frontiers between Belarus and the EU states Poland and Lithuania, which are refusing to let them cross.

The EU accuses Belarus of creating the crisis as part of a “hybrid attack” on the bloc - distributing Belarusian visas in West Asia, flying in the migrants and encouraging them to try to cross the border illegally.