Local Roma have attacked a police patrol attempting to prevent felling of trees by a Roma gang near the town of Byala Slatina in Northwestern Bulgaria.

The incident Wednesday night occurred near the village of Vranyak where a police patrol found a van loaded with 4 cubic meters of illegally procured timber, the Regional Police Directorate in Vratsa announced Thursday.

The police officers took the bus to the yard of a nearby farm in the village of Vranyak. Just minutes later they were attacked by a crowd of 30 Roma, who wounded them, recaptured the van and disappeared.

One of the policemen has been hospitalized in Byala Slatina.

The local police detained Thursday morning four of the Roma who took part in the assault, and found the van parked in the local Roma quarter.

This is not the first incident of local Roma gangs attacking the police in the poor northwestern town of Byala Slatina. In the past, the authorities were forced to send in gendarmerie units to protect a closed industrial plant in the town from being ransacked by the local Roma population who subsist primarily on illegal tree felling and scrap theft.

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