IN pitch darkness, 18 migrants crawled through the secret 50ft-long earthen tunnel and passed beneath the EU’s razorwire border.
Captured on video, the desperate men mostly from then clambered from a burrow-like exit hole and bolted into thick forest.
The Great Escape-style underground passage – dug by ‘human mole’ smugglers – led from key Russian ally Belarus to EU nation Lithuania.
Discovered in remote forest near Kabeliai in southern Lithuania, this and other illicit tunnels are the latest transit routes for migrants attempting to reach Britain and Western Europe.
So far this year, Lithuania has identified 12 tunnels while border guards in neighbouring Baltic nation Latvia have found at least two.
Local officials believe the trade in humanity is being facilitated by Russian tyrant and Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko to .
Lithuania’s Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas admitted last month: “The threat of irregular migration is growing.
“Tunnels dug under the state border are becoming an unlawful alternative for entering Lithuania illegally.”
Border guards are locked in a tense cat and mouse battle to apprehend the tunnelers which can spill over into shocking violence.
Local media reported that in July a smuggling mob attempted to drag one guard back to Belarus after their tunnel was compromised.
Four officers had set an ambush at the entrance to the shaft close to the Kapciamiestis border crossing in southern Lithuania and detained then handcuffed several migrants.
Hearing the commotion, 20 more migrants armed with sticks and stones surged through the underground shaft from the Belarus side and attacked the guards.
One officer was said to have been beaten while an attempt was made to drag another back through the tunnel towards Belarus.
According to reports, the guard managed to break free but was injured in the process.
The security personnel were forced to retreat and the migrants – including those who had been handcuffed – escaped back across the border.
When it emerged that the State Border Guard Service had failed to notify their political masters of the extent of the violent incident, its chief Rustamas Liubajevas resigned.
At Lithuania’s National library in capital Vilnius, MP Vytautas Sinica told me: “The guard could have been taken into Belarus or harmed. The migrants had the upper hand.
“It raised eyebrows. How can we allow that?”
The MP, who serves on Lithuania’s Defence committee, added: “We are now in the process of changing policy to allow the use of guns in such cases.
“The border patrol personnel didn’t dare use their firearms because of maybe some legal issues afterwards. They might be taken to court and they’re not sure how it will end.
“So now we’re trying to make sure that if you’re in such a situation, you can defend yourself.”
Sinica insists the border in neighbouring Latvia is more porous than Lithuania’s.
On Tuesday Latvian officials revealed that armed smugglers attempted to push 20 migrants across the border from Belarus. They threatened Latvian soldiers before retreating.
Hours later masked intruders entered Latvian territory, stole surveillance cameras and fled back to Belarus before a border patrol arrived.
Latvian Interior Minister Janis Dombrava described the incident as “blatant and aggressive”.
Dombrava added: “Belarus should understand that such incidents can lead to more serious consequences for Belarus itself.”
It follows another incident in July when Latvian soldiers fired a warning shot and used tear gas against migrants attempting to cross the border.
Officers recently found two tunnels – one 130ft long – which smugglers had burrowed under the border fence.
In August Latvian border guards detained 28 migrants who had crawled through an underground passage from Belarus.
The earthwork’s exit on the Latvian side was concealed with a lid made from moss to camouflage it against the forest floor and was 65ft away from the border fence.
Almost 12,000 migrants have already been prevented from crossing the Baltic nation’s border fence this year.
Latvian officials have little doubt that Belarus is complicit in the influx.
Captain Vladimirs Sersts from Latvia’s State Border Guard said: “When you see a group of migrants freely walking along the fence on the Belarusian side, this is your answer. This is a restricted area.”
Latvia says the smugglers work for criminal gangs who in turn work for Belarus’s intelligence service – still called the KGB.
And migrants arriving in Belarus by land from all points east have to pass through Russia first.
Both Lithuania and Latvia are staunch allies of Ukraine following its invasion by Putin’s forces.
Vilnius University’s Margarita Seselgyte says the tunnels are “a hybrid attack to cause anxiety in our society”.
The Director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science added: “The main goal is probably to weaken support for Ukraine and disrupt European unity.”
The s has long been a smuggling haven.
Cigarettes, alcohol and other contraband flowed across remote national boundaries that were difficult to police.
Then in August 2021 Belarus launched a Russian-backed ‘hybrid war’ with the European Union.
Dictator Lukashenko – a Putin mini-me – had pledged to “flood” the EU with “drugs and migrants” after Europe backed his political opponents.
He allowed thousands of migrants to fly into Belarus, visa-free or on tourist papers, and encouraged them to travel westwards.
Migrants later told how Belarus provided them with wire cutters and axes to cut through border fences and enter Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
In November 2021, I met Iraqi Sangar Ahmed at the New Jungle migrant camp near Dunkirk on the French coast.
Hoping to stow away on a lorry to the UK, he said he’d been part of the multitude who passed through Belarus.
Then 32, the business graduate told me: “Belarusian soldiers guided us across the border into Poland – but they were using us as political weapons.”
Soon Poland and the Baltic states began constructing imposing border fences to stem the migrant flow.
Then in February 2023 Russia invaded Ukraine and migrants again became unwitting pawns in Belarus’s hybrid war.
Now sinister people smugglers are trying to burrow their way into the EU.
Accompanied by Lithuanian border guards, Sun photographer Darren Fletcher and I were given access to the Baltic nation’s .
Bumping along a patrol trail beneath a 15ft barbed-wire topped fence, it’s evident this is now a frontier of steel.
Pausing at the now-closed Jurgio Kybarto border crossing around an hour’s drive east from Vilnius, two-tonne concrete dragon’s teeth blocks now guard the highway.
Surveillance cameras monitor the full length of the 422-mile border and seismic equipment can detect vibrations caused by tunnel diggers.
Since the 2021 border crisis, Lithuania has stopped over 26,000 migrants from entering the country from Belarus.
So far this year, just under 1,700 migrants have been prevented from crossing.
Yet, the tunnellers are still attempting to breach the high-tec frontier.
In July a Lithuanian border patrol compromised work by smugglers on an unfinished 36ft-long underground shaft near Pertako in the south east of the country.
Some 20 diggers in civilian clothing fled back to Belarus when the guards approached.
Images released by the State Border Guard show a degree of engineering expertise by the gangs.
Resembling a small-scale mine shaft, the tunnel’s roof was shored up using wooden struts and beams.
Smugglers removed sandy soil from the passage’s interior using shovels and buckets in what must be back-breaking work.
Officials in Poland – which has also been targeted with tunnels from Belarus – said earlier this year that specialists from the Middle East with “a high level of expertise” had designed the structures.
Both Lithuania and Latvia employ a tough ‘push back’ policy of returning most migrants to Belarus.
In video released by Lithuania’s Border Guard, the 18 migrants held near Kabeliai are seen being frogmarched back to the frontier fence and then forced through a gate back into the Russian puppet state.
A senior UN refugee agency official last year urged Lithuania to end the practice.
The UNHCR’s Annika Sandlund said migrants are “often victims of smuggling, of exploitation, of various criminal gangs.”
Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, told me: “It’s not unusual for some EU countries to do migrant push backs.
“I find it very difficult to understand why France in particular doesn’t take illegal migrants back from Britain.
“It beggars belief that Britain is paying the French through the nose to stop migrants for nothing in return.”
The Baltic countries destroy the tunnels soon after they’re discovered.
Yet, with war still raging in Ukraine, Belarus’s diggers will doubtless return to this secluded borderland soon.
Pictures by DARREN FLETCHER.
