A car bomb went off outside a Bank of Greece building in central Athens early today, smashing windows in nearby shops but causing no injuries, police and Reuters witnesses said.
The blast struck hours before Greece planned its first foray into the international bond markets since it plunged into a debt crisis four years ago, and a day before a visit by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
An anonymous caller warned a newspaper of the attack about 45 minutes before the explosion just before 6am, saying it contained about 70kg of explosives, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police believed leftist or anarchist groups were behind it, the official said.
Witnessess saw debris strewn across the street in a busy part of the capital lined with banks, shops and a mall.
Makeshift bomb and arson attacks have escalated since Greece adopted unpopular austerity measures in exchange for multi-billion euro bailouts by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in 2010.
Small scale attacks against politicians, journalists and businesspeople are frequent in Greece, with its long history of political violence.
Greece, at risk of crashing out of the euro zone just two years ago, will issue its first sovereign bond in almost four years today, seeking to send a strong political and economic signal it is on the way out of its debt crisis.
International banks have been mandated to sell a benchmark five-year, euro-denominated bond under British law, with the sale to be completed “in the immediate future,” the country’s finance ministry said in a statement.
Greece initially priced the sale at a yield of between 5 and 5.25 per cent and has already attracted more than €11 billion of investor interest. “We aim to raise up to €2.5 billion ,” one Greek government official said. “It will be a great success if the coupon is below 5.3 perc ent.”
The sale is an important milestone for one of Europe’s most troubled economies. The last time it sold bonds, as opposed to very short-term paper, was back in March 2010.
Greece has been kept afloat since by €218 billion of European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout money and about €15 billion of treasury bills. Athens has no pressing funding needs but wants to test the waters for more and bigger bond sales in the future, as part of its strategy to cover all its funding needs from the market by 2016.
Bailout payments from the EU expire later this year and Greece has said it needs no further bailout to stay afloat. The IMF welcomed the news, saying it proved the country’s tough austerity policies, which have helped eliminate its underlying budget deficit, were working.
Reuters
