MOSCOW (Sputnik) — In February, the Bulgarian parliament approved the deployment of the country’s military to assist in securing the country's borders amid the ongoing migrant crisis.
The Novinite news agency reported, citing the defense minister, that service personnel would be allowed to bear arms if necessary.
Bulgaria built a razor-wire fence along its border with Turkey last year and is expected to erect a new, wider and stronger fence in March in response to massive migrant inflows.
Europe has been struggling to handle a major migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people flee conflict-torn areas of North Africa and the Middle East in an effort to find a better life in stable and prosperous European states. The EU border agency Frontex detected over 1.8 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014.
