Bomb targets Athens bourse
A car bomb detonated outside the Athens Exchange in the central district of Votanikos early yesterday, causing extensive damage to the building and slightly injuring a woman in an attack that police were initially attributing to the terrorist group Revolutionary Struggle. The blast occurred outside the Athens bourse on Athinon Avenue just after 5.30 a.m. following an anonymous warning by telephone to the daily Eleftherotypia. A security guard at the exchange claimed to have seen a man wearing a motorcycle helmet walking away from the white van that, it transpired, had contained the device. The Athens explosion came less than an hour after another explosion targeted the Macedonia-Thrace Ministry in Thessaloniki. The bloodless attack in Thessaloniki is believed to have been carried out by a smaller terror group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire but officers yesterday were not ruling out the possibility that the two groups had coordinated their attacks. The Athens blast blew out windows and sent chunks of concrete and shards of glass hundreds of meters away. It also caused minor injuries to a female cleaner who had been at work in a nearby apartment building. Unconfirmed reports indicated that the bomb had comprised large quantities of ammonium nitrate. If this turns out to be true, it would strengthen suspicions of links to Revolutionary Struggle, which claimed responsibility for February’s failed attack on the headquarters of Citibank in Kifissia, in February, using a car bomb containing the same substance. According to police spokesman Panayiotis Stathis, the «general methodology» of yesterday’s attack pointed to the group. But there had been no claim of responsibility for the blast by late yesterday.
