November 20, 2024 - 8:43 AM
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek police said Wednesday they had seized explosives and weapons in a search of a storage area in an apartment building in Athens.
The search comes about two weeks after raids on five locations in Athens uncovered large quantities of explosives and firearms in an operation aimed at dismantling what authorities described as a significant criminal weapons storage and distribution network.
It was not immediately clear whether the two cases were related.
Police said Tuesday's raid uncovered just under 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, TNT and ammonium dynamite, along with 25 detonators, gunpowder and a slow-burning fuse. They also found submachine gun, six firearms, a fake license plate and a laptop. The case was being investigated by the police’s Special Violent Crimes Unit.
Organized crime and racketeering groups have periodically carried out small-scale bombings and targeted killings in Greece. The country also has a decades-long history of far-left extremism involving small urban groups.
Earlier in November, police arrested several people after an explosion in a third-floor apartment in central Athens killed a man believed to have been putting together an improvised bomb. It seriously wounded a woman in the apartment. Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis said at the time the explosion was linked to people aspiring to become a new generation of domestic terrorists in Greece.
The major extremist groups that carried out a string of assassinations from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s have been eradicated and their members imprisoned. They were succeeded by smaller and less efficient groups which mostly staged bomb attacks on symbols of state authority and wealth, but have been largely dormant in recent years.
News from © The Associated Press, 2024