GREECE: Explosion from home made bomb rattles central Athens

Record ID: 356531

  • Title: GREECE: Explosion from home made bomb rattles central Athens
  • Date: 20th March 2009
  • Summary: ATHENS, GREECE (MARCH 19 2009) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF THE CIVIL SERVANT BUILDING WHERE EXPLOSION TOOK PLACE STREET WITH SHATTERED GLASS AND DEBRIS FROM EXPLOSION POLICE SEARCHING THE AREA OUTSIDE CIVIL SERVANT BUILDING FIRE BRIGADE VEHICLE PARKED OUTSIDE ANTI-TERROSIST INVESTIGATION UNIT COLLECTING EVIDENCE AT THE CRIME SCENE VARIOUS OF ANTI-TERRORIST SPECIAL INVESTIGATION U
  • Embargoed: 4th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Greece
  • Country: Greece
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAE4OSIY25W6F543HJZXCPJLNFB
  • Story Text: An explosion at a building belonging to the civil service rocked central Athens on Thursday (March 19) damaging the building, as Greece struggles with a series of bomb and gun attacks in the last few months.
    Police said no injuries were reported at the building, which was empty, but the building and nearby shops suffered broken windows and damages from chipped plaster.
    The building was located near Athens main police headquarters in the centre of the capital and the Supreme Court building, and police quickly closed off the perimeter of the site. Anti-terrorist police were investigating but police said no one had yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
    It is the third attack from a home made bomb after two different branches of Citibank were also targeted with explosive devices in the last months. No one was injured in either of those attacks, one of which was a large car bomb and was defused before it could explode.
    Left wing guerilla group, Revolutionary Struggle, claimed responsibility for both of the bank attacks. In January Revolutionary struggle shot and seriously wounded a 21-year-old policeman in a revenge attack for the shooting of a 15 year old teenager by police in December.
    Revolutionary Struggle, Greece's most violent urban guerrilla group, emerged in 2003, carrying out various attacks with explosive devices, including a rocket propelled grenade attack on the US embassy in 2007. They appeared about a year after the capture of Greece's notorious November 17 terrorist organization, which had operated for decades and been responsible for politically motivated killings.
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