Border Police

Bulgarian and Greek special forces took part in a joint anti-terrorist training exercise at the Ilinden border checkpoint, Bulgaria's Interior Ministry said, quoted by the Independent Balkan News Agency. 

The scenario in the exercise was to neutralise a terrorist group located in a former embassy, the statement said.

Since the beginning of the year, Bulgarian security services have detained 52 traffickers of illegal migrants, reported BNR.

This was announced bt the head of Border Police Chief Commissioner Svetlan Kichikov before bTV. He specified that there were ''2054 illegal attempts to cross the border'' in the same period.

The Minister of Internal Affairs (MIA) Valentin Radev announced on BNT that nearly 10% of the MIA System is not full, reported Dnevnik.

In his words, those are around 4100 people from which 3600 are policemеn, and 500 - firefighters.

There is an 8 km long column of trucks at Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint, the press office of the Directorate General of Border Police announced.

At Lesovo border checkpoint, the queue of trucks is 1 km long. Traffic through the Bulgarian-Greek, Bulgarian-Serbian, Bulgarian-Macedonian and Bulgarian-Romanian border is normal.

Border police announced that during the Easter holidays the regime of checks at borders will be eased in order not to hamper traveling of people outside the country, BNR reported. 

However, checks will meet the requirements provided by Bulgarian and European legislation.

The traffic along the border with Turkey is normal, there is no crowding of buses or cars. This was reported  from the press office of Chief Directorate 'Border Police'.

The activity of the checkpoints was not interrupted during the night in both directions, the traffic is normal.

There is an 8-km queue of trucks at the border cross checkpoint Kapitan Andreevo at the exit from Bulgaria.

The queue at the Lesovo border cross checkpoint is about 2 km long.

At the Kulata border cross checkpoint, traffic is heavy but there are no queues, announced Border Police.

18 migrants have been detained by the police near the Kalotina border cross checkpoint. A day later, three traffickers were arrested as well.

The migrants, including six children, were discovered at the back of a truck during an inspection of Border Police.

All of the foreigners had valid documents issued by the State Agency for Refugees.

Poor organization at border crossings that causes kilometers-long queues has angered road haulage businesses, which threaten to stage a demonstration, according to the Bulgarian National Radio.

Border police officials of Bulgaria and Romania will meet near the city of Vidin on Wednesday to discuss the long queues of trucks lining up to cross the Danube Bridge 2 which connects the countries.

Tensions surfaced on Tuesday as truck drivers blocked the bridge, saying they had waited for many hours to pass.