About 1,000 illegal migrants have escaped from temporary accommodation sites

total of 975 illegal migrants have escaped from temporary accommodation sites in Lithuania since the beginning of the migrant crisis and nearly 700 of them have not yet been found, the 15min.lt news website reports on Thursday.

According to the data available to the news website, 185 of the runaways were detained later. Poland alone has already sent back 112 migrants who have fled the centers in Lithuania.

Meanwhile, 1,086 of the persons detained in Lithuania have opted for one-off payouts of 1,000 euros and free plane tickets to their country of origin.

Lithuania last year faced a surge in the flows of illegal migrants crossing or trying to cross into the country via Belarus. Vilnius accuses the Minsk regime of orchestrating the unprecedented migration influx, calling it "hybrid aggression".