Today Bulgaria is marking a national day of mourning in memory of the 15 victims in the blast that occurred in the ammunition deactivation factory by the village of Gorni Lom, northwestern Bulgaria. National flags at all Bulgarian state institutions are flown at half-mast. Most political parties have announced they put off public events planned for the final day of campaigning ahead of the parliamentary elections on Sunday. In the wake of the tragedy Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte has addressed a letter of condolences to the relatives of the workers killed in the blast. What caused the blast is still not clear and an investigation is underway.

What happened?

In data provided by investigation bodies, the blast took place on 1 October, at 4:58 pm. The village of Gorni Lom is gripped by horror. All workers who were on duty in two of the utilization workshops in the Midzhur military factory were killed by the blast: 13 men and 2 women. Tsvetan Antov, power engineer in the factory by Gorni Lom, has the following story: "What I saw was ghastly. Everything was in total ruin, flattened, no doors or windows left. All I could do was switch off the electricity. They won’t let me go further.” He explains that the factory worked 24 hours a day, with 8-hour shifts. To be paid their wages, workers had to comply with rates linked to orders for the utilization of Greek mines. "We all knew that it is dangerous but we have to earn a livelihood. Unemployment in this region is rampant”.

And can you guess what the pay for this job is: just 240 leva (about 120 euro) a month. It means people risk their lives for a piece of bread.

The mines had been delivered to the workshops for processing a day before the tragedy: directly from Greece loaded on seven long trucks. First, their detonators were deactivated in one of the workshops; and after that they were lathed in another workshop to extract TNT content. The people in Gorni Lom say that the factory employed fifty workers.

The tragedy is a fact now. What we are asking now is whether it is the result of human error or of failure to abide by the law and of violation of basic rules at work.

Most of the victims are young, aged from 25 to 40.

Human suffering is great. A team of professional psychologists, volunteers from the Bulgarian Red Cross, have immediately turned out at the site of the disaster to try and help the victim’s families.

English Daniela Konstantinova