Greek bombs target embassies
Athens, Nov. 3: Greece halted foreign mail deliveries on Wednesday after nearly a dozen small parcel bombs were discovered addressed to the leaders of France, Germany and Italy and foreign embassies in Athens.
A package addressed to the German Chancellor, Ms Angela Merkel, reached her Berlin offices on Tuesday, when another for the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, was found on a courier plane forced into an emergency landing in Italy.
A similar package was found addressed to the French President, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, on Monday in Athens in a campaign that has caused no serious injury and Greek authorities have linked to far-left Greek extremists.
Greece on Tuesday halted mail deliveries to foreign destinations for 48 hours as authorities struggled to deal with the wave of booby-trapped packages, most made to look like a parcel of books.
“The transport of mail and parcels abroad will be halted for 48 hours to enable follow-up inspections,” the police department said in a statement on Tuesday.
The parcel for Ms Merkel was delivered to her offices by the UPS courier company and discovered by staff who alerted the police.
It had been posted from Greece two days ago and “could have caused not insignificant damage”, the German interior minister, Mr Thomas de Maiziere, said.
The package addressed to Mr Berlusconi had been on a flight of the TNT courier company that was headed to Paris but diverted to Bologna in northern Italy when it was discovered late on Tuesday. The 2-kg package caught fire as experts began opening it, the report said.
A similar device left at the entrance to the Swiss embassy in Athens ignited when it was being examined by staff. Police said a second booby-trapped package exploded at the Russian embassy without causing injury.
Two parcels containing explosives hidden inside hollowed-out books were destroyed in controlled explosions at the Athens airport on Tuesday.
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