Ten Roma families from the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv have stated their desire to adopt recently orphaned kids from Palestine.

The idea first came to Abdulsamen Veli from the Plovdiv quarter Stolipinovo - a quarter of some 50 000 people, mostly minority.

Veli watched on TV that some 3 000 Palestinian kids were orphaned after the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip in January 2009.

Several other Roma families from Stolipinovo decided to join Veli and his wife, and contacted the Ambassador of the Palestinian Authority in Sofia. The ten families expressed their readiness to adopt Palestinian orphans despite the fact that most of them have four or five children, and the fact that they are struggling as their quarter Stolipinovo has a lower-than-average standard of living.

Eventually, the Palestinian Ambassador to Sofia thanked the Roma families for their readiness to aid the Gaza orphans but politely refused their offer stating that those children were Palestine's future.