Over 2,000 trucks stranded on Belarusian-EU border, lines enlarge 9 times at Polish border in past 24 hours

MINSK. Nov 30 (Interfax) - The number of trucks waiting to cross into Poland from Belarus has grown more than nine times in the past 24 hours, the Belarusian State Border Committee said on Thursday.

"The line to the Polish checkpoint Kukuryki (Kozlovichi on the Belarusian side) has significantly grown over the past day, from 70 to 650 trucks. Despite a noticeable increase in traffic, the adjacent side continues to clear about 65% of the normal number of trucks," the committee said.

In all, over 2,000 trucks are stranded at the Belarusian-EU borders, the committee said, adding that the number was around 1,400 a day ago.

According to the committee, "the Lithuanian direction remains the busiest route to the EU, as over 1,300 trucks are waiting there to be cleared." "Over the past day, the smallest number of vehicles crossed into Lithuania through the Medininkai (Kamenny Log) checkpoint, the controlling services of which cleared only 43 trucks out of 500 possible, or just 8% of the normal number. The staff of other Lithuanian border checkpoints allowed 32% of trucks to cross into their territory," it said.

The committee noted that the Latvian Paternieki (Grigorovshchina) checkpoint allowed 55% of trucks to pass.