Britannia Radio

Bomb Explodes Outside Athens Stock Exchange; One Hurt (Update1) 

By Natalie Weeks

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A bomb damaged the Stock Exchange in Athens overnight, injuring one person slightly, police said.

The device, placed in a parked van, exploded at 5:35 a.m. local time today. Windows of nearby buildings were smashed and one woman was hurt by flying glass, police said.

A phone call warning of the attack was made to the Eleftherotypia newspaperabout 40 minutes before. Greece’s anti- terrorist unit is handling the investigation, police said.

“The investigation up until now points to Revolutionary Struggle,” police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis said by telephone, though no one has so far claimed responsibility. The group said it carried out a January 2007 rocket attack on theU.S. Embassy.

The stock markets of Greece and Cyprus will operate normally today despite the damage to the bourse building, the Athens Stock Exchange said in a statement on its Web site.

Another explosive device went off at 4:55 a.m. behind the Macedonia-Thrace Ministry in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second- biggest city, a police spokesman, who could not be identified by regulation, said. Damage was minor and there were no injuries, he said. The two incidents were probably not connected, Stathis said.

Shootings and small-scale bombings have increased since protests that followed the Dec. 6 fatal shooting of a teenager by police in Athens. Revolutionary Struggle, which said it targeted two branches of Citigroup Inc. in Athens in February and March, said then that it will use the global financial crisis to spur a revolt to end capitalism.

To contact the reporter on this story: Natalie Weeks in Athensnweeks2@bloomberg.net.