SOFIA: Vigils in memory of thousands of victims of the communist regime have been held across Bulgaria.

The country's vice president, Margarita Popova, on Friday joined relatives of the victims, who lit candles and laid flowers at a monument in downtown Sofia engraved with the names of 7,526 persons killed during the communist regime. For those who have no idea where their relatives may be buried, the site is a symbolic grave.

The victims memorialized on the wall include many political opponents of communism executed after September 1944, when Bulgaria's communists seized power in this tiny Balkan country. The names of those who died in labor camps during the 1950s are also on the monument.