ATHENS, Greece — A brand new extremist group claimed duty Sunday for a bomb that exploded close to the workplaces of Hellenic Prepare, Greece’s most important railway companies operator and the planting of one other close to the Labor Ministry in early February.
The explosion Friday night resulted in restricted injury and no accidents. The perpetrators had forewarned of the explosion by calling two media organizations about 40 minutes earlier than it occurred.
In a prolonged posting on the web site Athens.indymedia.org on Sunday, the perpetrators, who styled themselves the Revolutionary Class Wrestle, defined the explanations for his or her motion, which they mentioned was a part of an armed wrestle towards the state.
Revolutionary Class Wrestle devoted the bombings to “the Palestinian folks and their heroic resistance” and paid tribute to Kyriakos Xymitiris, a person who was killed final yr when the explosive system he was assembling exploded in a central Athens house.
The explosion additionally got here throughout widespread public anger over a 2023 railway catastrophe, Greece’s worst, by which 57 folks have been killed and dozens extra injured when a freight prepare and a passenger prepare heading in reverse instructions have been by chance placed on the identical observe.
The lethal accident uncovered extreme deficiencies in Greece’s railway system, together with in security programs, and has triggered mass protests led by family of the victims towards the nation’s conservative authorities on the event of the accident’s second anniversary.
In its assertion, which serves as a form of manifesto, Revolutionary Class Wrestle connects the accident with what it known as the “murders” of the proletariat within the type of office accidents, by capitalists.
Greece has an extended historical past of politically motivated violence courting again to the Nineteen Seventies, with home extremist teams finishing up small-scale bombings that normally trigger injury however not often result in accidents.
Whereas the teams most energetic within the Eighties and Nineties have been dismantled, new smaller teams have emerged. Authorities are calling them a brand new technology of home extremists.
“With the blood not but dry, they attributed the (prepare) accident to human error and the ‘continual deficiencies of the Greek state,’ in impact demanding much more freedom of motion for capital, extra privatizations and new assaults on any remaining state-owned infrastructure,” the extremist group mentioned.
Hellenic Prepare, the operator of passenger and cargo prepare companies, was as soon as a subsidiary of state-owned Hellenic Railways. It was cut up and bought to Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017. Hellenic Railways retains possession and duty for the upkeep of the rail infrastructure, together with the prepare stations.
Police say they’re following leads, together with pictures of 1 or two people on safety cameras and attainable cellphone conversations.
