Bombs target Italian embassy cars in Athens: police

Homemade bomb exploded at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT), damaging a vehicle parked at the home of an embassy officer in an Athens suburb. (File/AFP)
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Updated 02 December 2022
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Bombs target Italian embassy cars in Athens: police

  • There was no immediate claim of responsibility and officers are still investigating

ATHENS: Two explosive devices targeted cars belonging to the Italian embassy in Greece on Friday, one of which went off causing no injuries, Greek police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility and officers said they were investigating.
A homemade bomb exploded at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT), damaging a vehicle parked at the home of an embassy officer in an Athens suburb, police said.
The other device, placed near a second diplomatic vehicle, did not go off.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “deep concern” at what she called an “attack... probably of anarchist origin.”
The far-right leader sent her “personal thoughts and those of the Italian government to the first counsellor of the Italian embassy in Athens, Susanna Schlein.”
Meloni added she was following the case “with the utmost attention” and through Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani who was in Athens for talks on Friday.
The Greek foreign ministry “strongly condemned the attack” and said such “unacceptable” acts “would not disrupt... the excellent relations and ties of long-standing friendship between Greece and its partner and ally Italy.”
Crude, homemade devices, which cause damage but rarely injuries, are commonly used against political or diplomatic targets, banks or foreign companies in Greece.
Police often blame groups on the extreme left or anarchists.


Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Updated 7 sec ago
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Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, ​targeting energy systems and injuring at least seven people in the capital Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, officials said.
“Hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles targeted energy systems, depriving people of power, heating, and water,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
Two people were hurt in a “massive” attack on Kyiv, which also hit various buildings, Mayor Vitali ‌Klitschko said.
Klitschko ‌said on Telegram there had been ​hits ‌on ⁠both residential ​and non-residential ⁠buildings on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city.
Fragments had fallen near two residential buildings in one district, but no fire had broken out.
Reuters witnesses heard explosions resound in the city.
Four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, were hurt in a missile and drone attack on the southeastern ⁠city of Dnipro and surrounding district, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha ‌said on Telegram.
One person was ‌hurt in a drone attack on ​the southern city of Odesa on ‌the Black Sea, which also damaged an infrastructure facility and ‌an apartment building where a fire broke out at an upper floor, head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak said.
Lysak also said that a fire engulfed pavilions at one of the city’s markets and damaged ‌a supermarket building.
Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said that energy infrastructure was damaged in Odesa district.
’BLOW TO ⁠PEACE EFFORTS’
“Each ⁠such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and de-escalate,” Sybiha said.
Ukrainian officials have met Russian officials under US mediation in Abu Dhabi in the latest US push to end the war.
But the talks so far have failed to resolve differences over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, sources say, and Russia has pressed on with attacks often focused on Ukrainian
energy facilities
in the depths of a harsh winter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said ​on Wednesday the US needed
to put ​more pressure on Russia
if it wanted the war to end by summer.