Sat, Jul 04 2009

Bulgarians living in Gaza Strip have not requested evacuation

Sat, Jan 03 2009 18:37 CET bySvetlana Guineva 167 Views

No Bulgarian citizens have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip as a result of the increasing tension between Hamas and Israel, private broadcaster bTV reported on January 2 2009.
 
During a phone interview, Siika Sharafi, a Bulgarian citizen who has lived in the region for the past 22 years, said that there were 46 Bulgarians in the Gaza Strip. She is there with her husband Kemal Sharafi and their eldest son. Their other two sons and a daughter are in Plovdiv with their grandmother.

Siika Sharafi said that, according to diplomatic regulations, Bulgaria could only evacuate Bulgarian citizens, and not other family members without Bulgarian identification documents. She said that she could not leave the rest of her family in Gaza and depart for Bulgaria.

When asked how they celebrated the New Year's Eve, Mrs Sharafi explained that they chose to stay in the basement and because of power blackout; they used the car batteries to feed the television set. As she spoke, an explosive-like noise was heard in the background; Mrs Sharafi said that a land offensive was being prepared and she could see Israeli tanks flanking not far from her house.

bTV quoted Dimitar Tsanchev, Bulgarian ambassador to Israel, as saying that the Bulgarian embassy in Tel Aviv maintained close contact with Bulgarians living in Gaza, but at the time of the broadcast, no one had requested evacuation.

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