The World - News from May 24, 1989

As many as seven people were reported killed and others were injured when security forces in Bulgaria, backed by tanks and other armored vehicles, opened fire during weekend protests by thousands of ethnic Turks in several cities, sources in Vienna and Sofia said. They reported that the confrontations were the most violent outbursts since a campaign in recent years by Bulgaria’s Communist authorities to get ethnic Turks to adopt Bulgarian-sounding names, restrict their Muslim religious rites and bar the Turkish language in public. The Bulgarian news agency BTA acknowledged that four people had died.