Police in Attica on Saturday arrested three youths believed to be responsible for 49 recent muggings and car thefts in the capital’s northern suburbs. The youths used the proceeds of their crimes mostly to buy drugs, according to police. On Friday, a 72-year-old woman was hospitalized after a 20-year-old man beat her in the street in Peristeri before grabbing her bag which contained 1,200 euros. An off-duty police officer gave chase and caught him within minutes.

A 62-year-old farmer found drowned in a reservoir near the Psychro Cave on the Lasithi plateau had probably slipped while trying to save a lamb that had fallen in, according to Cretan rescue workers who retrieved the bodies of both the farmer and the animal yesterday. Rescue workers and firemen started combing the area on Saturday night, after relatives of Michalis Giakourakis reported him missing.

The extent of the damage wreaked by a string of fires across the Cretan prefecture of Hania on Thursday and Friday will be assessed over the next few days so that those who have suffered losses can be compensated, Economy Minister Nikos Christodoulakis said yesterday during a visit to the area. Work to repair damage and to build anti-flood works will begin soon, Christodoulakis said. He added that an investigation was under way to determine whether the blazes, which started around the same time, were the work of arsonists.

Police and army explosives experts were yesterday alerted to the discovery of a Mills hand grenade dating back to World War II in an old tobacco warehouse in the northern town of Kavala.