Four assailants fired gunshots and hurled an improvised explosive device into the car park behind the premises of private television station Alter in Peristeri, western Athens, yesterday evening, causing damage but no injuries.

The explosive device, which failed to detonate, was being examined by police forensic experts last night. An Alter technician, who had entered the car park shortly after 7 p.m. when the assailants appeared, told police that the assailants had told him, “Get back, we’ve got no problem with you; we’re going to throw some dynamite.”

Police said that at least 10 shots were fired in the TV station’s car park, piercing the windscreens of several parked cars. Witnesses reported hearing even more shots. Police said the guns used were single-shot pistols rather than the automatic weapons used in recent assaults on police targets.

Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos condemned the attack, which he said “targeted the news media and democracy itself.”

There had been no claim of responsibility for the attack by late last night. But police said they were investigating the possible involvement of the so-called Sect of Revolutionaries, which has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks, as the group’s proclamation had included in its list of targets “big-shot journalists” – a suspected reference to Alter’s handful of highly paid and high-profile journalist-presenters.

Reports that they fired into the air after the attack provide another indication that the perpetrators might be linked to the new terror group. The assailants did the same thing after last month’s attack on a police station in Korydallos, which was claimed by Sect of Revolutionaries.