Global General

Special

Newsmaker

Asia Pacific

America

Middle East

Europe

Africa

Shooting attack injures Greek policeman

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-05 14:44

ATHENS, Greece -- Gunmen attacked a riot police unit in Athens Monday, seriously wounding a policeman in an escalation of violence after the fatal police shooting of a teenager last month sparked Greece's worst riots in decades.

Greek riot police stand in formation near the parliament building during a small rally in Athens December 19, 2008. Greek youths firebombed the French cultural institute in Athens on Friday and hundreds of students marched in a 14th day of anti-government protests set off by the police killing of a teenage boy. [Agencies]

The pre-dawn attack was aimed at a riot police unit stationed outside the Culture Ministry in the center of the capital, police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis said, adding that the policeman had been hospitalized in serious condition.

The policeman was being treated for two gunshot wounds, one to the thigh and one near the shoulder, and was undergoing surgery in a central Athens hospital, Panos Efstathiou, head of the Health Ministry's operations center, said on state television.

Police said two men -- one of them armed with a Kalashnikov-type automatic rifle -- had sprayed the police unit with gunfire at about 3:20 a.m. (0120GMT).

The attack comes nearly two weeks after gunmen opened fire with two automatic rifles against a riot police bus as it passed by a university campus outside the city center on December 23. None of the about 20 police on board the bus were injured in that shooting.

Police have frequently come under attack from protesters throwing gasoline bombs during two weeks of riots sparked by the December 6 death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in a police shooting in the often volatile Exarchia district, while masked men have also attacked police stations with gasoline bombs.

But no attacks had caused serious injury until Monday's shooting, which also took place in the Exarchia district, a downtown district of bars and restaurants that is also considered to be an area favored by radicals.

After the attack, patrol cars and riot police buses blocked access to much of Exarchia, and forensic investigators in white coveralls collected evidence from the site of the shooting.

Stathis said several people had been detained as police searched for the attacker. He said no information was initially available on the number of detentions. Local media later said about 70 people had been detained during the first hours after the shooting.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting.

After the December 23 attacke against the riot police bus, an anonymous caller had claimed responsibility for that shooting on behalf of a previously unknown group, and a public prosecutor who handles terrorism offenses was heading the investigation. It was unclear whether the claim of responsibility was reliable.

At least six serious attacks have been carried out by little-known domestic radical groups in the past five years, including two bombings and the fatal shooting of a policeman by gunmen who stole his automatic weapon.

Most of these attacks were claimed by a group called Revolutionary Struggle.