An Afghan refugee was shot dead by police near the border with Turkey after he and a group of other young Afghans allegedly resisted arrest for entering Bulgaria illegally, the interior ministry said on Friday.
Prosecutors are probing the death, the first fatal incident since refugees started flowing through Bulgaria two years ago.
The man died when police opened fire on a large group of "offenders" the interior ministry said, adding that the group had crossed the border from Turkey as the Afghans took the Balkans route towards western Europe.
“Our border patrol of border guards and police in the area had stumbled on 50 offenders, who illegally entered the country,” Georgi Kostov, the ministry’s chief secretary, was quoted as telling national radio.
“They put up resistance during the arrest. One of the officers fired warning shots and, in his words, one of the migrants was wounded by a ricochet and later died."
The Afghan asylum-seekers, aged between 20 and 30 were arrested after the incident which took place some 30 kilometres from the Turkish border, Kostov said.
The shooting happened beneath a bridge on the motorway from Burgas to Sredets at around 10pm local time on Thursday, according to local media reports.
All the Afghans were unarmed, Kalina Chapkanova, the public prosecutor for the Burgas region, was quoted as saying.
The spokesman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Boris Cheshirkov, condemned the use of force against migrants and appealed to Bulgaria to investigate the incident transparently and thoroughly.
But European Union President Donald Tusk said the bloc stood ready to help Bulgaria secure its frontier.
"The protection of our external borders is the main priority today," Tusk told journalists in Brussels at the end of an emergency summit on Europe's migration crisis.
"Mr Borissov is absolutely aware that we are ready to help them," Tusk said, referring to Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov, who left the summit early after learning of the Afghan's killing.
EU member Bulgaria is not part of the border-free Schengen Area and has deployed more border police, installed cameras and motion sensors, and is extending a security fence to cover 100 miles of its border with Turkey.
