COPENHAGEN: Finnish police say that 103 Iraqis were flown to Baghdad on Thursday — the first flight from Finland to Iraq since the surge of asylum-seekers began last year.

Detective Superintendent Hannu Pietila says the Helsinki Police Department, which has organised flights for returning migrants for more than a decade, is ready to continue similar chartered flights between the two countries to meet a growing number of returning Iraqis.

Immigration officials said Thursday that more than 3,100 Iraqis have withdrawn their asylum applications since January 2015, but that most had left the country paying their own way back or getting onto flights organised by the European Union from other countries.

Last year, nearly 32,500 asylum-seekers arrived in Finland, a near tenfold increase over 2014. Some 20,500 were from Iraq.