Blast at Swiss embassy in Athens; no injuries

[November 02, 2010]  ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- An exploding object was thrown into the courtyard of the Swiss Embassy in central Athens Tuesday, police said, a day after police foiled attempts to send mail bombs to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other embassies in the city.

No injuries were reported.

Police spokesman Athanassios Kokalakis said an object was thrown into the Swiss Embassy courtyard and a "deafening blast" was heard. Earlier Tuesday, police cordoned off the Bulgarian Embassy to investigate a suspicious package sent in the mail.

The string of attempted attacks began Monday when a bomb exploded at a delivery service, leaving a worker hospitalized with burns.

Motorcycle police later detained two Greek men, aged 22 and 24, several hundred meters from the blast site in central Athens.

Police said the men were carrying handguns and bullets in waist pouches, and one of them wore a bulletproof vest, a wig and a baseball cap. The suspects have not yet been charged. Bombs found at a different delivery service and in the suspects' backpacks were defused in a series of controlled explosions.

Besides Sarkozy, the targets were the embassies of Mexico, The Netherlands and Belgiums.

Police said domestic political extremists were suspected, and one of the two men detained had been wanted in connection with a Greek radical anarchist group. Authorities said the bombs were not particularly powerful, and no link was made with a recently discovered Yemen-based mail bomb plot.

[Associated Press]

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