NEWS

Police come under fire again

An armed attack at dawn yesterday on a police station in the Athens suburb of Korydallos in which two officers narrowly escaped being shot, was likely the work of the Revolutionary Struggle terrorist group, which has already targeted law enforcement twice in the last 40 days, sources said. According to police, three armed men wearing hoods opened fire on the police station at 4.15 a.m. Two officers were guarding the building at the time. One sought cover inside the station, while the other dived into a guard post. The assailants also threw a grenade, which did not explode, before they left the scene. The attack is reminiscent of a January 5 raid on three riot police officers who were guarding the Culture Ministry in Exarchia, which left one of them seriously injured. Revolutionary Struggle has claimed that attack as well as a strike against a police bus on December 23 in which there were no injuries. However, police said that the weapons used in yesterday’s attack had not been used in any crime before. At least 19 shots were fired, three of which hit the guard post, but the two guns used were not those that have been connected to previous Revolutionary Struggle strikes. Officers said that 9 mm bullet casings collected from the scene were fired from a handgun and not the MP5 submachine gun that the group has used before. The assailants also fired a Czech-made Scorpion submachine gun. There is no previous record of this firearm being used. The hand grenade thrown by the suspects was identified as an F-1 defensive hand grenade. When fleeing the scene of the Exarchia attack, the gunmen had also thrown a defensive grenade, although it was of a different make. In its proclamation following that strike, Revolutionary Struggle made it clear that it intended to continue targeting the police as a result of the killing of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos by an officer on December 6. Sources said that police are treating this latest attack as the work of Revolutionary Struggle but are not ruling out the possibility that it was the work of a splinter or copycat group.

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