SOFIA, BULGARIA – Six migrants were killed and three others and their driver were injured in a car crash near the Black Sea city of Burgas, a senior Interior Ministry official said Friday.
Border Police Chief Anton Zlatanov told reporters that the incident occurred shortly before midnight on Thursday when police tried to stop a truck with Romanian registration plates carrying nine migrants who had entered the country illegally.
He said the driver repeatedly refused to stop at the given signals and eventually tried to evade the spike strips placed by the police. The truck collided, killing six people. The Romanian driver and the three surviving migrants received first aid at the scene. Preliminary data indicate that the migrants were from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria, a Balkan country with a population of 6.5 million, is located on a major route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan to Europe. Only a few of them plan to stay in the EU’s poorest members, using Bulgaria instead as a transit corridor on their way west.
Over the past two years, up to 20 organized criminal groups involved in migrant smuggling have been neutralized, Zlatanov said.
“Zero migration is not possible because these are global operations. However, we have reduced migration pressure by about 70% compared to last year,” he said.