In Brief
EARLY BLASTS
Firebombs target unionists, policeman in Thessaloniki Police in Thessaloniki yesterday were seeking the perpetrators behind three bomb attacks, two on unionists and one on the home of a policeman, none of which caused injuries. A homemade explosive device planted outside the eighth-floor apartment of Sotiris Zarianopoulos, the general secretary of a local labor union, near the city center, detonated shortly before 2 a.m. At around the same time, a similar device went off outside the home of a policeman in the district of Ambelokipi. Shortly after 11 a.m. another homemade bomb went off outside the home of a former unionist in central Thessaloniki. The target of the attack was Dimitris Gousidis, the former head of the union representing journalists in Macedonia and Thrace. All three attacks caused limited damage but led to no injuries. GAZA TELETHON Donations hit 1.2 mln euros A total of 1.2 million euros in donations to a telethon for the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip is to be handed over to Deputy Foreign Minister Spyros Kouvelis tomorrow. The cash was raised during a telethon organized by 11 bodies including labor unions and prefectural authorities in Attica. A statement issued by the General Confederation of Greek Labor (GSEE), one of the organizers, noted that «the response of our fellow citizens, and particularly of the new generation, exceeded all expectations.» Fatal collision An elderly couple died and their granddaughter was injured in a head-on collision between the car in which they were traveling and another vehicle on a country road on the outskirts of Sparta, in the Peloponnese. The car being driven by the 82-year-old man is believed to have veered out of its lane and to have hit an oncoming car being driven by a 23-year-old man. The elderly driver and his 70-year-old wife were killed instantly by the force of the crash, while their 20-year-old granddaughter and the driver of the other car sustained minor injuries. Cable thieves Police yesterday were seeking the perpetrators who removed about a kilometer of copper cable from a section of railway track on the route between Athens and Thessaloniki. The theft was realized by railway officials when a train en route to Thessaloniki stopped at the point where the cable had been cut shortly before 3 a.m. yesterday. The severed cables did not lead to the train suffering any damage or causing any injuries. Separately, six gunmen broke into a copper warehouse in Aspropyrgros, northwestern Attica, and fled with a large amount of copper. Bets off An armed robber threatened the owner of a betting shop in Thessaloniki yesterday morning as she was opening her store and forced her to hand over the weekend’s takings before fleeing. It was unclear how much cash had been in the register. There were no injuries reported.
