As many as 100,000 stray dogs are thought to live on the streets of Bucharest, a feral reminder of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's orders to bulldoze hundreds of houses in the capital during the 1980s.
BUCHAREST — A stray dog killed a Japanese man in Romania's capital Bucharest on Sunday when it bit into a vital artery in his leg, police said.
"The dog cut an important vein in the man's left leg. He crawled maybe 30 metres (yards) and only managed to tell a guard 'dog and ambulance' before he died," police spokesman Christian Ciocan said.
As many as 100,000 stray dogs are thought to live on the streets of Bucharest, a feral reminder of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's orders to bulldoze hundreds of houses in the capital during the 1980s to make way for grandiose buildings.
Although a 1989 revolution toppled Ceausescu's regime, efforts to get rid of the dogs have become a highly publicised problem.
"When we tried to solve the stray dogs problem in the past, we were held back by sensitive people who love animals. Now, look what happens," Bucharest deputy mayor Razvan Murgeanu told private TV station Realitatea.
International animal rights activists, including former French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot, have repeatedly stymied plans to dispose of the dogs by criticising government efforts to cull them in public forums as animal cruelty.
"I'm sorry to say this, because I also have a dog at home, but the only way to prevent this kind of events is to take a radical measure of exterminating stray dogs," Murgeanu said.
Source: Reuters
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