Three bombs exploded next to a police station in Athens early on Wednesday, police said, causing no injuries but further raising security fears just 100 days before the Greek capital hosts the 2004 Olympic Games.
According to state television channel NET, the blasts caused extensive damage to the police station in the southern Athens suburb of Kallithea.
Athens is struggling to finalise preparations for the Olympic Games, which are scheduled to run from August 13 to 29, and is planning a big security operation because of fears of extremist attacks.
But the Greek police and government said they saw no connection between Wednesday’s bombs and the Games, and the police said their main line of inquiry was into local extremist groups.
”There is absolutely no reason to link this incident with the Olympics. It is a local affair,” a senior police official said on condition of anonymity.
”There has been an exaggerated reaction to the blasts … Such things have happened frequently in the past,” Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Evrypidis Stylianidis told radio station Flash. ”We must be on alert but we should not exaggerate.”
The Australian Olympic Committee voiced concern over the pre-dawn explosions but said it was not contemplating pulling its team out of the Games.
”Any bomb that goes off in Athens is worrying,” said Bob Elphinston, secretary general of the Australian Olympic Committee.
”This [Athens] is now the Olympic city and again whether it’s a coincidence that it’s 100 days to the Games … time will tell.”
The three blasts occurred within 45 minutes of an anonymous telephone warning to an Athens newspaper, police said.
They believed the timing of the blasts, which they described as ”middle-sized”, was staggered in the hope that the second and third bombs would injure policemen arriving on the scene after the first explosion.
They gave no details of the nature of the bombs or the possible identity of the bombers.
Senior police officiers were sent to inspect the site of the blasts.
According to NET, at least one of the bombs seemed to consist of dynamite attached to a timer.
The Athens Games will be the first Summer Olympics since the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
Athens has allocated more than 50 000 police and army personnel to ensure security at the Games and is spending more than $780-million on related equipment.
Greek security forces have been dismantling urban guerrilla groups and arresting members of the extremist organisations November 17 and the People’s Revolutionary Struggle in a bid to boost security ahead of the Games.
But in recent months the country has seen a resurgence in low-level urban violence, with a string of firebomb attacks, mainly against branches of commercial banks.
Police believe such attacks are conducted by anarchist groups that do not have the capacity to stage large-scale operations.
Local mafia gangs in Athens also occasionally attack rival groups with explosives.
Last September an Athens court was targeted in a double bomb attack that injured a policeman. And late last year police foiled dynamite attacks against branches in Athens of US bank Citibank and US insurer AIG.
Bob Carr, the premier of Australia’s New South Wales state, which hosted the 2000 Sydney Olympics, said Wednesday’s bomb attacks were a cause for serious concern.
”Even if it’s established it’s not al-Qaeda, even if it were established it’s not an international terrorist group, it would still be very, very worrying, of course,” Carr said.
”And we commiserate with our friends in Athens. We know the unsettling effect it would have had if it had happened here.” — Sapa-AFP
Can the Greeks pull it off?