A southern Athens motorcycle mechanic was seriously wounded yesterday during a shootout with the special police counterterrorism squad, which stormed his home after the man opened fire on officers trying to detain him for resisting arrest.

Dimitris Panayiotopoulos, 45, was shot in the stomach and left arm as he was trying to escape through a toilet window in the ground floor of his three-story residence in Ilioupolis. Counterterrorism officers shot dead his dog, which, they claimed, had attacked them.

As members of the elite force burst into his house, Panayiotopoulos opened fire three times with a shotgun, without wounding any officers.

The raid followed a four-hour standoff that started when Panayiotopoulos shot at two policemen who had come to arrest him on the strength of a 14-month conviction — in absentia — for resisting arrest. Officer Constantinos Bozios was hospitalized with a non-life-threatening shoulder wound.

Panayiotopoulos remained in serious condition after undergoing surgery at the Evangelismos hospital.