The search operation for the young man who went missing in the Maritsa river in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv last week continues on Monday.

The search for nineteen-year-old Petar Valchev, who went missing after bathing in the area of the rowing base with his seventeen-year-old girlfriend Desislava, has entered its sixth day.

Divers, rescuers and volunteers with canoe have continuously expanded the perimeter of the search operation.

Near the place where the two went bathing there are areas where depth reaches more than six metres.

While Desislava managed to come out of the river on time, Petar got carried away by the water. Since he did not know how to swim, he started to drown.

She tried to help him get out of the water by passing him a wood, but he did not manage to catch it.

With the abrupt rise of the temperatures in Bulgaria, there have been several drowning incidents across the country recently.

Two boys drowned in the Yantra river in the city of Veliko Tarnovo. There were also a couple of incidents on the Black Sea coast, in which two young men and a Russian tourist drowned respectively in the resort of Sunny Beach and the town of Aheloy.