anarchism in bulgaria 18

Bombings

Ottoman Bank after blow up, April 1903.

The burning French ship "Guadalquivir".

On the 28 April 1903, a member of the group, Pavel Shatev, used dynamite to blow up the French ship "Guadalquivir" which was leaving the Thessaloniki harbour. The bomber left the ship together with the other passengers, but was caught later by the Turkish police at the Skopje train station. The same night, other group bombers: Dimitar Mechev, Iliya Trachkov, and Milan Arsov, struck the railway between Thessaloniki and Istanbul, causing damage to the locomotive and some of the cars of a passing train without wounding any passengers.
The next day, the signal to begin the large raid in Thessaloniki was given by Kostadin Kirkov who used explosives to shut off the electricity and water supply systems of the city. Jordan Popjordanov (Orceto) blew up the building of an Ottoman Bank office, under which the "gemidzhii" had previously dug a tunnel. Milan Arsov threw bombs in the "Alhambra" Café. The same night, Kostadin Kirkov, Iliya Bogdanov and Vladimir Pingov detonated bombs in different parts of the city. Dimitar Mechev and Iliya Truchkov failed to blast the reservoir of a gas-producing plant. They were later killed in their quarters during a shoot-out with army and gendarmerie forces, against which Mechev and Trachkov used more than 60 bombs.
Jordan Popjordanov was killed on April 30. In May, Kostadin Kirkov was killed while trying to blow up a postal office. Right before being caught, Cvetko Traikov, whose mission was to kill the local governor, killed himself by setting off a bomb and then sitting on it.
Continuation of the Thessaloniki bombings were the bombing of the passenger train at the railway station Kuleliburgaz led by Mihail Gerdzhikov and the bombing campaign of the passenger ship "Vaskapu" in the Burgas Bay led by Anton Prudkin, both organized by anarchists close to the IMRO in August 1903.