479 foreign citizens were barred from entering into Georgia after border control has been beefed up following the November 13 Paris terror attacks, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

It also said that 31 foreign citizens and one Georgian national have been arrested on charges of illegal border crossing in a period between November 14 and November 24.

In the most recent case, the Interior Ministry reported on November 24 that one Georgian and one Turkish citizen were arrested as they were trying to smuggle 15 Somali citizens from Georgia into Turkey in a cargo truck via the Sarpi border-crossing point.

The Interior Ministry said that as part of beefed up border control, “especially thorough checks” are applied to visitors arriving in Georgia for transit purposes in order to prevent the illegal entry of citizens of, as it put it, “high-risk countries” to reach third countries via Georgia.