Two Migrants Drown in Danube in Bulgaria

Police officers found the two dead bodies near the village of Archar in north-west Bulgaria, while four other migrants, including children, are missing, Commissioner Dimiter Chorbadjiev of the Rousse Regional Border Police Directorate said on Monday.

Chorbadjiev told Bulgarian National Television that the accident occurred last Thursday evening, when ten migrants tried to enter Romania by crossing the Danube on a boat, guided by smugglers.

Four of the migrants, two men and two women, who did not have documents but claimed to be from Iraq, were found on the island of Dobrota on the Bulgaria side of the Danube.

They said that a boat carrying two boys, two girls and two young men had capsized in the river.

According to Chorbadjiev, a search and rescue operation, which Romanian border patrols also joined, continued throughout Thursday night and the following day but was cancelled on Friday evening.

It remains unclear, however, why the accident was not announced publicly in the period from Thursday, when six people including four children reportedly went missing, to Sunday, when the two dead bodies were discovered.

A spokesperson for the Bulgarian border police told BIRN on Monday that "not reporting on accidents is a policy of the press centre".

"We have not covered up or hidden the case. We were not asked about it by anybody," she said.

In February, however, when the bodies of two female refugees, who had frozen to death in south-eastern Bulgaria were found by the border police, the case was announced officially.

Asked why the latest incident was not announced, Chorbadjiev that there was no evidence for the drownings apart from the migrants' claims, and police were treating it as a case of illegal border-crossing....