NEWS

In Brief

QUAKE ASSISTANCE

Athens offers Indonesia 200,000 euros after tremor kills thousands Greece offered Indonesia 200,000 euros on Saturday to help in the humanitarian effort after an earthquake on the island of Java killed more than 4,600 people. Greece put up the money through the Foreign Ministry’s Hellenic Aid program and said that it would monitor the situation and could make more funds available. The ministry said that no Greeks were known to have been killed in the 6.2 Richter quake. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis sent a letter of condolence on behalf of the Greek people to the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyon. ASPROPYRGOS FIRES Cars, trucks ablaze at freight firm A fire that broke out yesterday in the parking lot of an international freight company in Aspropyrgos, west of Athens, burned 17 cars, 11 trucks and six trailers before it was brought under control by some 75 firefighters at around 4 p.m. The fire had been burning for some three hours. The fire service said that another blaze started at around the same time in one of the firm’s warehouses, burning two cars and a refrigerated truck. Investigators were looking into the causes of the two fires. Bank attack Several families in Aegaleo, western Athens, were forced to flee their homes early yesterday morning after a branch of the National Bank of Greece (NBG) that was located on the ground floor of their building was firebombed. Attackers smashed the bank’s window at about 1.30 a.m. and threw a Molotov cocktail inside. Firefighters put out the blaze, which caused serious damage to the NBG branch. Apartments on the first floor of the building were also slightly damaged by the smoke from the fire. Smuggling arrest An Italian national was arrested yesterday in Orestiada, northeastern Greece, after authorities discovered he was transporting two illegal immigrants in his car. The suspect was detained shortly after legally clearing a checkpoint on the Greek-Turkish border. Police said the suspect had probably picked up the two migrants after they had slipped into Greece from Turkey on foot. Phone thieves A prosecutor in Athens charged a 16-year-old boy with theft yesterday after the teenager was accused of swiping two mobile phones from their owners. The suspect, a Syrian national, as well as five other teenagers also suspected in the affair, apparently used violence to wrest the phones from their owners.

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