GENEVA – The UN refugee agency UNHCR expressed concern on Tuesday about hundreds of migrants camped out near the Belarus border with Poland and called for an end to vulnerable people being used as political pawns.

“We are very alarmed by the scenes that we are seeing from the Belarus-Poland border,” UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo told a UN briefing, adding that the agency was particularly worried about the fate of women and children in the region.

“We have repeatedly said that using refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to achieve political ends is unacceptable and must stop,” she added.

Poland has accused Belarus of trying to spark a major confrontation by encouraging the migrants to cross into Poland and the European Union, according to Reuters.

A spokesman for Poland’s special services, Stanislaw Zaryn, said Belarusian security personnel were “firing empty shots into the air, simulating dangerous events” to further destabilise the situation at the border.

“We also know the Belarusian authorities are helping migrants to destroy the border barriers. We see how they bring them tools to cut wires… to destroy the fence,” he added.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government denies manufacturing the migrant crisis and blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.

Around 800 people are currently camped out on the Belarusian side of the fence, the Border Guard told Reuters. Poland’s special services said as many as 12,000 migrants may currently be in Belarus.

EU member states trace the roots of the migrant crisis to Belarus’s contested presidential election in 2020 in which Lukashenko claimed a sixth successive term, triggering mass street protests that were violently quelled by security forces.

The United States, European Union and Britain then imposed sanctions on Minsk. They have accused Lukashenko and his security forces of encouraging and sometimes shepherding the migrants to cross the EU border through Poland and Lithuania in a form of hybrid warfare in revenge for the sanctions.

The Kremlin on Tuesday praised what it called the “responsible” work of Belarusian security personnel at the border and said it was in close contact with Minsk over the crisis. It called on all sides to act responsibly.