Armed thugs have robbed about 1.6 million U.S. dollars in four different crimes committed on Sunday and Monday, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry said.
The most successful attack was done at the first minutes on Monday in Sofia when unknown bandits entered unnoticed in office rooms of one of the largest Bulgarian supply chain for groceries, crushed a metal safe and stole 1.5 million dollars found there.
“This theft is similar to other ones, but they were not revealed so far,” head of Sofia police Valery Jordanov told reporters. He added that at least ten criminal groups specializingin robbery act in the Bulgarian capital.
Ten hours after the big hit, two masked men rushed into a shop for mobile phones and vouchers, threatened the cashier with a gas gun, got 40,000 dollars available there and escaped.
Early Sunday morning another crime group smashed a metal door of the town-hall of the Black Sea resort Saint Vlas, three kilometers north of Sunny Beach, entered the banking office there, and stole a metal case with 35,000 dollars in it. In addition, the offenders broke several offices belonging to the local municipality and stole about 3,300 dollars.
The police have not got any clear information up to now concerning the perpetrators of the three crimes. Investigation is going on.
In another incident, Bulgarian police killed a highway bandit several minutes after he and his two companions robbed 7,500 dollars from a Turkish citizen on a Trakia highway, about 30 kilometers from Sofia.
A police patrol noticed two suspicious cars on the road at midnight on Monday and tried to stop them. The bandits, who just robbed the Turkish man, began to shoot at police officers with automatic weapons. The fire response of the patrol shot in the head one of the offenders. The other two escaped.
The Interior Ministry seeks for ten people in total to check their alibi for the time of the gunfight, regional police head Todor Iliev told reporters, while Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the rest two bandits were believed to belong to the so called “Crocodiles Group.”
Crimes always increase in the days before the New Year, Tsviatko Tsvetkov, former deputy interior minister, told reporters.