Fire at the ammunition depot near Karnobat has been extinguished

The fire that broke out yesterday, July 31, in the ammunition storage facility near Karnobat has been completely extinguished, but the road is still cordoned off.

No one is allowed in the warehouses yet. A period of 72 hours is required before investigators are allowed in to inspect the area. One of hypothesis is arson.

"The situation is calm, there is no tension, no panic in the town. Yesterday at 7 pm, a second inspection was carried out with a drone. The competent institutions are waiting for 72 hours to pass to be able to enter the site," Stefka Ivanova, deputy mayor of Karnobat, told BNT on August 1.

The road from Sokolovovo is cordoned off for safety reasons, but there is a municipal road that leads to the respective settlements.

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Two explosions went off in the early hours on July 31 after a fire at an ammunition storage facility in Karnobat. No injuries were reported. The warehouse is owned by the company of Bulgarian arms manufacturer and trader Emilian Gebrev.

The police said that the report of the fire was received that around 03.30 on July 31. Firefighters headed to the scene.

Rumblings were heard from the warehouse, the last of which was around 05.00 this morning. The building is secured with a solid fence and is a good distance away from the other three warehouses.

The area was promptly cordoned off by police officers from the Karnobat police station, who found that no people were injured by the fire and no other buildings were affected.

An inspection of the scene will be carried out after the fire has been completely extinguished and after a period of 72 hours following the last rumble was heard at around 05.00 a.m. on July 31.

This is not the first incident at the ammunition storage facility owned by Emilian Gebrev's company.

Last year, the prosecutor's office announced that six Russian nationals were suspected of bombings at factories and warehouses, with a link to the poisoning of Emilian Gebrev also suspected. The state prosecutor's office said at the time that after analysing cases of explosions in ammunition warehouses, similarities were found in four of them, with the commonality that the products were owned by the EMCO company of arms dealer Emilian Gebrev and were intended for export to former Soviet republics and Ukraine.

EMCO then came out with the position that some of the Prosecutor’s office allegations were false and misleading and asked "is the Prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Bulgaria hiding something related to the activities of the Russian special services in Bulgaria for several years now and what would be the reasons for that?"

In 2014, explosions also broke out at Gebrev's warehouses in Vrbetitsa, Czech Republic. A New York Times article from April 2021 said that that Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev admitted that among the ammunition that exploded in 2014 in the Czech Republic, there was military equipment for shipment to Ukraine.

The Prosecutor's office is also investigating an attempted poisoning of the businessman in 2015, for which three Russian nationals were suspected.

Bulgaria charges three Russians with attempted murder of Gebrev

International investigation order issued for the poisoning of Gebrev