Sofia Zoo is poised to receive financial compensation from the security firm that failed to prevent the carnage resulting in the brutal death of 15 animals, dismembered by stray dogs, Bulgarian media reported on February 2 2010.

A pack of strays penetrated the grounds of Sofia Zoo and killed a total of 15 animals, including deer and fawn, Bulgaria's bTV reported on January 31 2010, in an incident that had occurred several days earlier.

Sofia municipal council asked zoo director Ivan Ivanov to make an assessment of the damages which will be paid by the security company Bodu.

At the time of the attack, five security personnel were in the zoo, one at every entrance, and a patrol of two tasked to cover the entire perimeter.

Apparently, the pack of strays got into the the deer enclosure via a car park near the fence. Having climbed a structure in the car park, the pack then jumped into the zoo grounds.

The area breached by the strays has been reinforced and the fence was propped up with an additional fence towering two metres over the original at the time of the attack, Dnevnik daily said.

BTV said that the animals were "ruthlessly dismembered" and only a large male deer survived because it managed to fend off the strays with its antlers.

"This incident could have been easily prevented," Ivanov was quoted as saying. "Now every shift is issued three gas pistols," he said.

On October 19 2009, a pack of stray dogs dismembered a six-year-old girl, Kristiana Marinova, from the Razgrad village of Topchii.

In 2007, a British woman Ann Gordon died after being attacked in the Bulgarian village of Nedyalsko.

In Sofia, pedestrians and cyclists are harassed by strays on a daily basis. According to statistics from "Ekoravnovesie" and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, there are between 8500 and 9000 strays in Sofia alone.