At least 200 arrests as ethnic clashes erupt in Bulgaria

Police and elite national troops patrolled the streets of Katunitsa at the weekend after several houses were set alight and cars owned by a local Roma clan leader were trashed.The violence in Katunitsa, southeast of Bulgarias second-largest city of Plovdiv, ignited on Friday night when a 19-year-old man was struck and killed by a mini-bus driven by a man linked to local self-proclaimed Gypsy Tsar Kiril Raskov.Smiling, happy boy, ambitious. He was not guilty of anything. He did not provoke them, those who killed him with their car, saidGina Tancheva, a local villager and relative of the victim.Local councillor Dimitar Mulchev said the ingredients for violence have been around for decades.The clashes happened because of the indifference of state institutions over the past 20 years. Villagers have been threatened with murder so many times by Kiril Rashkov, and its always on an ethnic basis.More than 500 angry residents gathered in front of one of Raskovs houses and called for him and his family to be thrown out of the village, which has a population of 2,300.