Bucharest, 22 nov (EFE).-the Romanian Parliament today approved a law to legalize euthanasia of the tens of thousands of stray dogs who live in cities across the country and represent a serious problem of public health and safety citizen.

The law, whose vote was postponed several times since last March under pressure from the protective of animals and part of citizenship, allows local authorities the possibility of killing the dogs with a lethal injection when citizens vote for the measure in a referendum municipal.

Dogs must be collected from the street by each city and housed in kennels municipal for 30 days.

If after this time they have not been claimed by an owner or adopted, dogs may stay in kennels, be returned to the street once sterilised, or can apply it the euthanasia.

Only in Bucharest live, according to official, close to 70,000 dogs estimates Street.

According to data provided to the press by the prefect of Bucharest, Mihai Atanasoaei, more than 24,000 people were treated in hospitals in the capital by bites of wild dogs in 2009 and 2010.

The controversial law adopted today has been a source of open warfare between supporters and opponents of eliminating the dogs in the street.

According to the local press, the problem of the street dogs back in Romania before the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, when dictator Nicolae CeauÅŸescu forced hundreds of thousands of Romanians to move to the city or to live in blocks to their plans of industrialization and social systematization.

Unable to have dogs in the new apartments, many Romanians were forced to abandon them, multiplying since then its population in the streets.

The use of euthanasia which now offers the mayors is not new in the country Balkan.

In 2001, under the command of then-Mayor and now head of the State, Traian Basescu, were removed in Bucharest around 50,000 street dogs.

Social and international pressure with the actress Brigitte Bardot as headliners of the protest, was later lowered the number of animals removed, until that euthanasia was completely banned in 2008. EFE

Mg/ll/ik