According to officials from both countries, four people were found dead on the Belarusian-Polish border on Sunday, a week after Warsaw declared a state of emergency following an influx of migrants.
Polish border guards added that they also found eight exhausted migrants stuck in swamps elsewhere along the border. Seven of them were hospitalized.
In recent months, thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have crossed or attempted to cross the border from Belarus to neighboring European Union member states – Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
The EU suspects that the influx is being staged by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in response to sanctions against his government.
“Today (Sunday) the bodies of three people were found in the region bordering Belarus,” Polish border guards wrote on Sunday.
The individuals were found in three different locations and were “probably illegal immigrants,” Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for the border service, told the Polish news agency PAP.
The fourth body of an Iraqi woman was found on Sunday near the Belarusian border.
“The body of a woman of non-Slavic appearance was found within a meter of the Belarusian-Polish border,” a Belarusian border guard told the Belta state news agency.
Acting head of the Ussiv border post Yevhen Omes said that there were “obvious traces” on the ground that the body was being transported from Poland to Belarus.
Belta said that three children, a man and an elderly woman, were found near the body. They are all Iraqi citizens, Belta added.
Belta said that the victim’s husband said that Polish law enforcement agencies had taken them to the border and “under threat” forced them to cross to the Belarusian side.
Earlier on Sunday, Polish border guards wrote on Twitter that they had also been rescuing migrants stuck in a swamp near the Suprasl River near the border with Belarus for several hours.
“Eight immigrants (five men and three women) were rescued, seven of them were hospitalized,” border guards wrote on Twitter, adding that firefighters, rescuers and police were also involved.
They also said Saturday was a busy day, noting 324 attempts to cross the border illegally from Belarus to Poland.
Last week, Poland imposed a 30-day emergency measure banning non-residents from crossing its border with Belarus, the first time the country has taken such a measure since the fall of communism in 1989.
He also sent thousands of soldiers to the border and began building a barbed wire fence.
In early August, Belarus said it had found a dead Iraqi man near its border with Lithuania, claiming he had been killed.
Western governments have imposed several packages of sanctions on Belarus in connection with the crackdown on dissent, which began when protests erupted across the country following last year’s controversial election.