ATHENS – Greek police intercepted a booby-trapped parcel addressed to French president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday, after another package exploded at a courier company in Athens, slightly wounding an employee.
Police suspect the parcels were linked to Greek far left guerrilla groups. Greece has been rocked by a wave of gas canister and bomb attacks, usually claimed by far left groups, since the police killing of a teenager in Athens in 2008 sparked the country’s worst riots in decades.
The parcel that exploded in the hands of a woman employee was addressed to the Mexican embassy in Athens, police said.
Shortly after the explosion, police arrested two suspects and detonated two more makeshift parcel bombs they were carrying and a third one found at another delivery company.
“One of the explosive devices that the suspects were carrying was addressed to the president of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy,” police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis said. The other packages were addressed to the Belgian and Dutch embassies.
“It is not clear what the motive behind these attacks was,” he said.
Another police official said the quantity of explosives used in the parcel bombs was too small to kill.
In June, a booby-trapped package killed one of the police minister’s closest aides. On Friday, two air cargo packages containing bombs, sent from Yemen and addressed to synagogues in Chicago, were intercepted in Britain and Dubai. – (Reuters)