Yuriy Galev, president of the Rilski Sportist football club and nationalist municipal councilor in the town of Samokov, who was shot early on Sunday, is in critical condition, doctors said.

“The patient will have to spend ten days in the reanimation unit, provided that the surgeries go well,” the head of the emergency department at the Pirogov hospital, Dr. Stoyan Sopotenski, told journalists later on Sunday.

He said that Galev is the only one admitted to the hospital following the accident, denying an earlier statement by Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov that the life of Galev’s driver is also in danger.

Galev was brought to the Pirogov hospital in Sofia with an ambulance from Samokov at about 6 am Sunday, according to the Interior Ministry

Unofficial reports say unknown men shot at his car. Galev has five gunshot wounds in the stomach and the limbs.

Galev is notorious in Samokov for a number of criminal acts. The latest one was in February when Galev and several of his associates beat two ski lift guards in the Borovets mountain resort after the latter refused to let his son ride the lift for free.

In the wake of this incident, the local police arrested four of Galev's men for arson of an office of the Borosport firm, which operates the ski lift.