Police liberate landfill After garbage accumulated in the streets for seven days, nearly 1,000 police officers in riot gear removed a road block that neighborhood protesters had set up outside an overflowing landfill in the Sofia suburb of Suhodol. Residents were protesting the municipality’s refusal to stop using the dump on June 30, as it had promised, according to the newspaper Sofia Echo. Dumping of household waste resumed shortly after officers sealed off the Suhodol area and carried away protesters who were lying on the road. Spurred on by MPs from the radical “Ataka” coalition, protestors booed and threw stones at the police and the caravan of garbage trucks that filed into the landfill immediately after it opened. Stela Bankova, a member of Ataka, told a reporter that the issue would probably be referred to the public prosecutor, as the use of force against the protestors was unacceptable. Two police officers were injured in the confrontation, one with a concussion and the other an arm injury. Despite allegations of police brutality, none of the protestors was injured, the Echo reported. Eleven protesters were detained for disobeying police instructions, but were let off with warnings and released on July 8.

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