Officials of the Bulgarian GERB party strongly condemned comments from the caretaker Government regarding the devastating bus crash overnight involving a Macedonian bus in which 45 people were killed.

Miniser Violeta Komitova implied that the state of the Struma highway contributed to the disaster. The new highway was built under the GERB term in office and the party took the allegation personally.

To put forward political insinuations on such a dreadful day is completely unnecessary. The statements about the state of the road, given by the Mayor of Pernik and the two ministers are deeply wrong, said Desislava Atanasova from GERB.

Aleksandar Ivanov from the party pointed that this stretch of the Sofia – Dupnica – Blagoevgrad highway was built between 2002 and 2004, and that it does not have turns or declinations that would violate standard norms. GERB calls on Komitova and other ministers in charge of maintaining the roads to be removed from office.