Since the beginning of the year, Bulgarian authorities have detained at immigration centres nearly 16 000 foreigners, who had illegally entered the country.

This was announced by the Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Georgi Kostov, in interviews for private bTV and NOVA TV stations on Thursday.

Roughly 5000 people were detained at each of the following locations – at the entrance of the Bulgarian-Turkish border, at the exit of the Bulgarian-Serbian border and in the interior of the country.

Since the beginning of the year some 4000 people have been detained in the capital Sofia alone, Kostov added.

In his words, all of the detained people initially declare that they are from Syria, but later it turns out that a lot of them are in fact from Afghanistan and some African countries.

Since the beginning of the year more than 200 people have been detained and charged with trafficking and some of them have been convicted.

A regular police operation in downtown Sofia on Wednesday evening resulted in the arrest of 130 people, who had illegally crossed into Bulgaria.