Officers of the Regional Border Police Directorate in Elhovo have detained twenty-five illegal immigrants, nineteen of them from Africa.

Acting on top-off, border police officers in Elhovo spotted a large group of suspected illegal aliens in the region of the southeastern Bulgarian village of Lesovo.

A border patrol unit detained a group of eleven people, including nine men and two women.

Two men from the same group were detained later in the village of Malko Kirilovo.

A total of 16 of the detained were from Africa and had no identification papers, and there were also one Afghanistan national and one Eritrea national.

Most of the Africans told border police that they were from Mali but the investigating authorities suspect that they are taking advantage of the situation in the country to claim refugee status.

It emerged that many of the illegal immigrants had been planning to reach France.

Some told Bulgarian border police officers that they had arrived in Turkey by ship.

They informed that a part of the group had been formed in Istanbul, from where they had headed for Bulgaria in a van.

They said that they had met another part of the group before reaching the Turkish-Bulgarian border, adding that the newcomers had been abandoned by their leader at the border.

The illegal immigrants have been detained at the Regional Border Police Directorate in Elhovo.

Border police officers in Elhovo detained Wednesday three other Africans without identification papers, one of them claiming that he was from Mali and two saying that they were from Togo.

Meanwhile, the border police unit in Svilengrad informed that they had detained four illegal immigrants without ID papers who claimed that they were Palestinians.