TIRANA, Oct. 18 – The mysterious death of four Russian tourists at a spa in a luxurious hotel on Albania’s Adriatic coast has authorities baffled, with medical experts suspecting asphyxiation from chlorine at an indoor pool and prosecutors not ruling out foul play, officially registering the deaths as not an accident.
The four Russians, all members of an extended family, were found dead alone by hotel staff Friday night by a heated indoor pool in the basement of the five-star Gloria Palace Hotel, in Qerret, just south of Golem Beach.
Husband and wife, Sergey Burenkov, 60, and Natalya Burenkova, 58, of Moscow, were on a package holiday tour with their daughter Ekaterina, 31, and her fiancé Nikita Belousov, 37. They had spent the day visiting Ohrid in North Macedonia with several other members of their tour group, before returning to their hotel on the Albanian coast.
There has been a lot of speculation on the deaths, and earlier reports in the local media were wrong, according to authorities. For example, it was wrongly reported that the four died in a sauna and that they were heavily intoxicated. Neither was true, according to police and medical investigators.
Representatives from Russia’s embassy in Albania were called in by authorities soon after the deaths were discovered, and the Russians requested to have a representative present.
“The Embassy Consular Department is in constant contact with the law enforcement agencies of the country and investigates the circumstances of what happened. We count on a thorough investigation by the Albanian side of the causes of death of the Russians. The relatives of the deceased have been notified. Repatriation of bodies to come,” the Russian Embassy said in a statement on social media.
The chief suspect at this time is a newly-filled indoor pool which might have had too much disinfectant chlorine in it, which combined with the lack of ventilation in the basement setting could have led to the quick suffocation of the four.
Albeit, Albanian prosecutors do not appear entirely convinced by that explanation as they have registered the deaths into a category that involves foul play.
Albania’s tourism sector has seen a major influx of tourists from former Soviet states in recent years, including from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They typically arrive in all inclusive tour group package holidays on direct charter flights.
