Chernobyl disaster gave football star Stiliyan Petrov cancer, claims Bulgarian doctor

Petrov grew up 650 miles from doomed power station

Toxic cloud passed over his hometown



Communist leaders in Bulgaria 'hid threat to kids'

Aston Villa captain Stiliyan Petrov's cancer was caused by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster more than 25 years ago, according to his national team's doctor.

The 32-year-old was diagnosed with acute leukaemia last month.



Dr Mihail Iliev, who has treated Petrov for 14 years in his capacity as Bulgarian national team medic, is blaming a toxic radiation cloud the star was exposed to when he was just six years old.

Stiliyan Petrov, accompanied by his wife and son, thanks the crowd support during the Aston Villa Chelsea game on March 31

On April 26, 1986 a power surge in reactor number four caused an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine, sending a huge plume of radioactive material into the sky.



At the time Stiliyan Petrov was growing up in Montana, Bulgaria, 650 miles away from Chernobyl.

But the cloud of contaminated matter is believed to have passed over the city in the weeks following the disaster.

Dr Iliev, 61, claimed radiation levels in the north of Bulgaria were 1,000 to 1,300 times normal levels in late April, early May 1986.



He said a number of youngsters at the time, or born in the aftermath of the disaster, developed cancer - because Bulgaria's communist regime failed to tell people about the threat.

Dr. Iliev told The Sun 'It was in the late spring, the population was eating fresh radioactive vegetables and other foods. Many people who were kids back then suffered cancer because of this.

Chernobyl: Greenpeace believes the disaster will eventually cause 200,000 cancer cases

Dr Mihail Iliev, doctor to the Bulgarian football team, blames Chernobyl radiation for Stiliyan Petrov's cancer diagnosis

'We called them The Chernobyl Kids. Most were born in the same region as Stiliyan . '



Radiation from Chernobyl is known to have caused widespread birth defects across the former Soviet Union, but its effect on the inhabitants of neighboring countries is hard to measure

Levels of contamination were detected across much of Europe in the aftermath of the disaster and experts say the toxic cloud spread out and west across the continent with closest neighbours Belarus, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Norway and Bulgaria worst effected.

CHERNOBYL: 26 YEARS ON

A t 1.23am (2123 GMT), on April 26, 1986, an explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant spewed a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe, Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.

The explosion released about 400 times more radiation than the U.S. atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima. Hundreds of thousands were sickened and once-pristine forests and farmland still remain contaminated now.



Dr Iliev is even more convinced Petrov's cancer is related, because there is no history of cancer in his family.

Dr. Iliev added, 'There are no other cases of such illness in this family, that is why I think Stiliyan is a victim of the old communist regime’s lack of information when the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded, and the radioactive cloud came to our country.'

The UN's World Health Organization says that among the 600,000 people most heavily exposed to the radiation, 4,000 more cancer deaths than average are expected to be eventually found.