Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria carried out their first joint forced return flight for illegally residing third country nationals, working together with the Frontex agency to send 51 people back to their countries of origin.

The flight was organised by the immigration service, with support from both the foreign ministry and the deputy migration ministry.

Cyprus removed some 35 third country nationals who had been living in the country illegally, while Greek authorities returned 15 and Bulgarian authorities returned just one.

Since the start of the year up a total of 6,027 third country nationals have been repatriated from Cyprus to their countries of origin.