The 20-year-old girl who was stabbed by an Algerian immigrant in downtown Sofia on November 2 said that the incident was not supposed to incite xenophobic attitudes.

"I do not think that my case should incite xenophobic attitudes, this is a criminal case – an attempted armed robbery," said Viktoria Hristova, the shop assistant assaulted in Sofia's Pirotska Street last week, in a Sunday interview for private TV station bTV.

"My wounds hurt, I do not feel well. I have wounds on the neck, at the back of my head, and on the arm" she explained, as cited by Darik Radio.

Although she does not want to remember what happened on the night of the attack, she said that the main suspect arrested for the stabbing, Salahedin bin Aladdin, had entered the store as an ordinary customer.

She said that he had he had been a customer of the store prior to the accident but he had never been aggressive.

Hristova refuted allegations that she had insulted him.

On Friday, the suspect, who was arrested in Greece nearly a week after the assault, pleaded guilty, adding that his actions had been triggered by insults on the part of Hristova, who had called him "a stray dog eating rubbish."

Regarding allegations that she had taken part in a refugee trafficking ring, she said that they offended her but she accepted them as a defensive reaction, taking into account that the state was plagued by a number of problems and could not cope with everything.

She admitted that she was afraid to go out in the street and walk along Pirotska Street again, adding that there was nobody who could guarantee that the attack would not recur.

Hristova argued that applicants for refugee status were not supposed to walk freely around Sofia.

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