(Updates with number of casualties) SOFIA, Feb 29 (Reuters) - A fire swept through two sleeping carriages on a Bulgarian train overnight, killing eight people and injuring nine, officials said on Friday. The Transport Ministry said 62 people had been in the two coaches. The train was travelling from the capital Sofia to the northern town of Kardam. "We have searched the carriages and found eight bodies. They are completely burnt and cannot be identified," deputy regional prosecutor Valeri Mirchev said. "There are a lot of ashes, but we believe there are no other bodies." The news was confirmed by the National Health Coordination Centre, which said that a DNA test will be made to identify the victims of the fire that raged for about 20 minutes and completely destroyed the carriages. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Prosecutors and police are investigating the incident. Interior Minister Rumen Petkov said initial investigation shows the incident most likely was not an arson. Nine passengers were injured, four of whom were admitted to hospital with burns, officials said. "Everything happened very quickly and the fire spread rapidly. We were running, leaving the train barefoot, some people were climbing out of the windows in their underwear," said Marina Novacheva, who was in one of the carriages. "There were only three fire extinguishers on the whole train and only one of them was working. This was the biggest problem," she told TV channel Nova Televizia. The head of the state railway operator, Oleg Petkov, told reporters the workers used five fire extinguishers but failed to put out the fire as it spread very rapidly. He defended the safety standards of the railway and said initial investigations showed the train workers had acted professionally. The carriages were produced "before the 1980s", but had passed all safety and operational checks, Petkov said. More than half of BDZ's passenger train carriages are over 20 years old. "We have not had such a grave incident with so many victims since 1992. For us, it is unexplainable how can such a big fire break out in such a short time," Petkov said. The last big railway incident in the Balkan country was in August 1992, when 10 passengers died after their train collided with a cargo train. (Reporting by Tsvetelia Ilieva and Anna Mudeva, editing by Sami Aboudi)
A man protests with a sign reading "Stop the genocide" during a rally of workers from Bulgaria's largest steelmaker Kremikovtzi in central Sofia January 31, 2008. Some 2,000 workers at loss-making ...
