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Bulgaria should ask for EU help to protect the border, former deputy minister says

Police sirens to sound across the country in mourning of murdered border police officer

Photo: BGNES- library

Mourning was announced in the municipality of Elhovo on November 9 in memory of the 32-year-old police officer Petar Bachvarov, who was killed in a shootout at the border. The junior inspector will be posthumously awarded a Badge of Honor and at the request of his parents, he will be buried with a Border Police uniform on Wednesday.

No additional forces have been sent to the border with Turkey since the tragic incident. The forces are sufficient, chief commissioner Stanimir Stanev, who is also the deputy chief secretary of the ministry has told the BNR. Two people have been detained in Turkey over the incident. They are Turkish citizens, Stanev said and added that teams of the Bulgarian prosecutor's office and the Ministry of the Interior in Turkey that are led by deputy ministers are already in Turkey.

We cannot recall of such a serious border incident in the new history of the EU, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Milen Keremedchiev told BNR.

"We have good cooperation with the Turkish authorities and we worked with them so that the huge migrant flows are not directed to Bulgaria. There were heavy waves towards Greece, which sealed its border. We did not do that and we continue to negotiate with our Turkish partners from the position of the weaker side. It is obvious that we rely on other services and countries to stop traffickers and to guard our borders," Keremedchiev said.

"Frontex" also helps the Bulgarian border control at the moment, but this is not enough. In recent months, there has been no adequate response to a greatly increased and structured migrant flow. It is possible that there are members of terrorist organizations in it, which makes the work of the police even more dangerous.

"We must admit that we cannot deal with this problem alone and should ask for more serious cooperation, because breaching our border security is breaching the EU border," Keremedchiev added.




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