Journalists published a video of the use of live ammunition against refugees who tried to get from Turkey to the territory of Bulgaria in order to obtain political asylum in the European Union.
The Lighthouse Reports project publishes a video filmed on October 3, 2022 near the Bulgarian border checkpoint. A group of Syrian refugees can be seen heading towards the fence, with border guards opening fire with live ammunition in response. A bullet hits 19-year-old Abdullah El-Rustum Mohammed. The young man, having been wounded, falls to the ground.
This is the first video footage of a refugee being shot at a European border. According to Lighthouse Reports investigators, doctors later recorded that the bullet passed through the refugee's arm and entered the chest, getting stuck within a centimeter from the heart.
Journalists also managed to find Abdullah himself in Istanbul, who said that he and his friends tried to cross the border and get into Bulgaria. The young people were caught and sent back to Turkey. He confirmed that he had been wounded by the Bulgarian border guards.
In the video, there are two vehicles that are on the Bulgarian side: one of them, presumably, is a Land Rover Discovery (such vehicles are used by the Bulgarian border police), and the other corresponds to a Bulgarian army truck, Lighthouse Reports notes. Next to the cars, you can also see two people whose uniform matches the uniform of the Bulgarian border guards.
At the end of September, a state of emergency was introduced in two regions of Bulgaria due to the influx of migrants. This was announced by the Acting Minister of the Interior of Bulgaria Ivan Demerdzhiev, BNR reported . According to the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs, since the beginning of 2022, almost 104,000 people have tried to cross the border with Turkey, which is almost 3.5 times more than in the past. Bulgaria erected a 200 km long barbed wire fence on the border with Turkey.