The nationalist party Ataka is staging a provocation and aggression against the most humane right – the right of wоrship, the ethnic Turkish party DPS declared in a statement.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) denounced Friday's incident in which members of the nationalist party Ataka assaulted praying Muslims in the Banya Bashi mosque in downtown Sofia. DPS has described Ataka as "an anti-European, extreme-nationalist party."

The brawl that the nationalists and their leader Volen Siderov started as part of a protest against the mosque's loudspeakers has led to an unprecedented for Bulgaria interruption of the Muslims' Friday's prayer. Five police officers were wounded in the ensuing fight.

"In the downtown of the capital of a European Bulgaria, led by Members of Parliament from the same party, extreme elements from Ataka assaulted the religious temple of the Muslims and used violence against peaceful citizens. We insisted that all political forces defined as democracy declare themselves against this brutal provocation. We insist that the state authorities take immediately the necessary measures for preserving the civilian peace, and to hold accountable both the perpetrators and the instigators of this act," the statement of the ethnic Turkish party reads.

This is the only way to prevent a further escalation of tensions and to stop Ataka from using religious and ethnic intolerance as means of conducting policies, DPS believes.

"We hope that the law enforcement institutions will be sufficiently uncompromising and will be influenced by the fact that Ataka is part of the ruling majority, and that the executive won't tolerate such actions although they are committed by its coalition partner," the party says referring to the fact that Siderov's Ataka has been an informal supporter of the ruling center-right party GERB.

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