Bulgarian PM Calls for Calm after Roma Tensions

Bulgaria's prime minister appealed for calm Tuesday following several days of violence and ethnic tensions involving the EU country's 10-percent Roma minority.

"I call on everybody to be careful and not to play with fire... It is very easy to spark an ethnic conflict," Boyko Borisov told journalists, adding there was already "huge instability".

Hundreds of people in Sofia's Orlandovtsi neighborhood have staged daily anti-Roma protests since Sunday after seven youngsters were injured in a fight between locals and Roma.

On Monday night police prevented several dozen locals from storming the Roma ghetto.

Four men have been charged with hooliganism and some 70 people -- protestors and Roma -- have been arrested in the past two days.

"We have nothing against the Roma from our area. But there are gypsies coming from the country who harass our girls, attack our boys and steal from our houses," protester Petar Ivanov, 52, told AFP.

Tensions have also been running high in the southwestern town of Garmen for several weeks with locals protesting about Roma houses built without planning permission.

Bulgaria's 700,000-strong Roma or Gypsy minority have long lived on the fringes of mainstream society with below-average levels of education, employment and health care.

Experts say that this latest upsurge in tensions in the European Union's poorest country is linked in part to opposition and ultra-nationalists stirring up tensions ahead of local elections in October.