Two Roma people, a father and son, were assaulted in the centre of the Bulgarian town of Blagoevgrad in one of the latest incidents following the deaths and unrest in Katounitsa.

Kostadin Todorov said that he and his son had been attacked while putting up posters. A group of skinheads had assaulted them, knocking his child to the ground. No one had come to assist them, he told Bulgarian National Television.

The incident followed one of the latest protest marches that have been held on recent nights after the Katounitsa incident, in which trouble broke out in the village, near Plovdiv, after a 19-year-old man was run down and killed on September 23 by a mini-bus driven by a man linked to local self-proclaimed "Gypsy King" Kiril Rashkov.

Residents of Blagoevgrad's Roma neighbourhood, hearing of the September 28 assault, armed themselves with axes and sticks and attempted to head for the centre of the town but were blocked by a police cordon.

A large police presence remained in the streets of the town overnight to prevent further violence, Bulgarian National Television said.
 
Elsewhere, the night passed peacefully in the country, bTV said on September 29.

About 650 people took part in protest marches in various cities - significantly down from the previous night's estimated 2200. The largest turnout on September 28 was in the Rhodope town of Assenovgrad, where about 200 people marched. Ten were arrested, of whom three were under-18s. Five were held for not having personal identification cards.

In Sofia, the turnout was 60 and in Plovdiv about 100. During the Sofia event, no racist chants were heard - in contrast to previous nights - while participants sang Bulgaria's national anthem and chanted slogans such as "freedom or death".

On September 29, a public prayer for peace was to be held in Varna's Cathedral of the Assumption. The city's Bulgarian Orthodox Christian Metropolitan Kiril decided on the service in response to tensions after the Katounitsa incident.

Addressing Parliament on September, acting Interior Minister Vesselin Vouchkov said the Interior Ministry had faced in the past few days one of its worst challenges in the two years since Prime Minister Boiko Borissov's ruling party GERB took office, because "a spark was tossed which could have started a big fire", Bulgarian news agency BTA said.