Kyustendil Province

A wildfire in the Rila Mountain in Southwestern Bulgaria has now been fully contained, the local firefighters' service says.

Bulgarian authorities detained a group of 26 Syrian refugees in the district of Kyustendil near the border with Serbia early on Friday.

There were four children among the refugees, who were traveling in a minibus bearing a licence plate from Kuystendil, private bTV station reports.

The former Mayor of the southwestern Bulgarian municipality of Kocherinovo Kostadin Katin will serve a 4-year prison term.

Katin's sentence was upheld Thursday by the Supreme Court of Cassation.

The Kyustendil District Prosecutor's Office announced that he would serve his jail term at a open-type correctional facility, according to reports of Sega daily.

Various demonstrations were held in front of the Parliament building as the legislature kicked off its opening session Monday.

Archaeologists excavate remains of late antiquity basilica and a medieval fortress at the Hisaluka hill near Bulgaria's Kyustendil.

According to the Darik national radio, the remains are facing north beneath an alley from 1966. The basilica remains consist of a part of an apse, the south wall and stone pavement at the south western corner of the southern nave.

The European route E-79 remained sealed off for hours on Monday as angry demonstrators voiced their anger at authorities' decision to hand out an MP seat to Aleksandar Metodiev from the DPS.

Metodiev, also known as "Bat Sali", will be among lawmakers representing the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) from the region of Kyustendil, a town in Bulgaria's south-west.

Residents of Bulgaria's city of Kyustendil will block the international road to Gyueshevo, the border checkpoint with Macedonia, at noon, Monday.

The blockade is in protest against the election of the controversial DPS lawmaker Aleksandar Metodiev also known as "Bat Sali" without enough votes cast in his favor.

Chief executives of the Bobov Dol thermal power plant and trade union representatives have reached agreement with Bulgaria's caretaker government on normalizing the work at the plant and the coal mining companies in the region.

Five coal mining companies in Bulgaria are directly affected by the decision of the Ministry of Environment and Water to stop one of the units of the Bobov Dol Thermal Power Plant, according to trade unionists.

Workers at the Bobov Dol Coal Mine (Vagledobiv Bobov Dol EOOD) staged a one-hour protest and threatened to take further steps to defend their interests.

Ognyan Zarev, who was in the management of the Bobov Dol mines, has been fired after a hidden-camera footage alleged controlled vote ahead of May's European Elections.