A 15-year-old Cretan youth yesterday faced murder charges after shooting his 16-year-old brother in the head with their father’s gun in their home in Gangales, Iraklion. The siblings had been playing with guns legally owned by their father — who happened to be absent — when the youngest fired at his brother, apparently unaware that the weapon was loaded. The 15-year-old then wiped his fingerprints off the gun and hid it, according to police, who said he eventually admitted to the crime during questioning.

Youths threw seven Molotov cocktails at a police van in central Athens early yesterday but only damaged a bus stop, authorities said yesterday. The group had intended to firebomb a bank but attacked the van as it passed by, according to officers. The gasoline bombs missed the van and hit the bus stop. No injuries were reported.

Two men were killed and two injured yesterday in a car crash involving three vehicles on the notoriously dangerous stretch of the Athens-to-Thessaloniki national road beside the Maliakos Gulf. Anastassios Efstratiou, 57, was killed when two cars traveling in the opposite direction veered into his lane and crashed into his vehicle, pushing it off the road. A passenger in Efstratiou’s car, whose details were not made public, was seriously injured. Vassilis Haidousis, 32, who was a passenger in one of the oncoming vehicles, died in hospital a few hours later. Another passenger in the car suffered light injuries.

A strong undersea quake, measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale, struck the area south of Palaiohora in Crete shortly after 11.30 a.m. yesterday. The quake was felt across the island but there were no reports of any injuries or damage.

There are no plans for Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet on the sidelines of the Euro-Med Summit which begins tomorrow in Barcelona, alternate government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros said yesterday. Karamanlis had been expected to visit Ankara this year but the trip was postponed. Antonaros said the Greek premier’s schedule at the two-day summit would be very tight.

Euro summit to focus on immigration

The president of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), Lamine Diack, gave his support yesterday to Greece’s plans to build the World Athletics Museum in part of the building used as the International Broadcasting Center during the Athens Olympics. Diack was in Athens to meet with Alternate Culture Minister Fanni Palli-Petralia, who said that the tender for construction of the museum would be completed next month. The two also discussed detailed plans about an annual Throws Gala, which will be held at Ancient Olympia in the Peloponnese each year.

Stage designer and director Stefanos Lazaridis will assume the role of creative director of the National Opera from January 1, the Culture Ministry announced yesterday.

A 58-year-old Communist Party (KKE) cadre and union leader was killed in a car crash on Thursday on the road back to Athens from a meeting in Ioannina. Dimitris Fetsis, who had been the president of the Democratic Union of Professional Craftsmen in Athens, lost control of the wheel and crashed into an oncoming truck, police said.

Police in Alexandroupolis were yesterday seeking a 25-year-old man in connection with an armed raid on a foreign exchange bureau in the northern city on Thursday. Michalis Kotanidis is believed to have stolen 13,000 euros after threatening two cashiers. Police detained a 20-year-old man found at Kotanidis’s residence for questioning.