Bulgarian police will carry automatic weapons and sometimes be accompanied by police dogs to patrol crowded places in major cities during the Christmas holidays in a bid to instil a sense of calm and security among citizens, Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
The patrolling officers are part of the gendarmerie and special anti-terrorism units and “will patrol in the areas of large shopping areas, Christmas markets, central city areas, railway and bus stations, as well as in small towns,” the ministry said.
“The aim is to guarantee peace and ensure good public order during the upcoming holidays,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
Bulgarian citizens are not used to seeing the heavily armed police and special forces deployed in the malls and streets of Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas. What’s more, local police have been severely discredited in recent cases of gratuitous police violence used against protestors in Sofia.
In the last terrorist attack in Bulgaria, which took place at the Burgas airport on 18 July 2012 and targeted a bus with Israeli tourists, seven people, of which five were Israelis and two were Bulgarian, died – and 35 were injured. Bulgarian authorities announced that the attack was financed by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry also warned of shop robberies during the Christmas holidays – even though major robberies are a rare occurrence in Bulgaria.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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Source: euractiv.com
