Athens, Greece (AP) – A new extremist group claimed the responsibility for a bomb on Sunday that exploded near the offices of the Hellenian train, the most important train groom in Greece and the plants of another near the Ministry of Labor at the beginning of February.
The explosion on Friday evening resulted in limited damage and no injuries. The perpetrators had warned the explosion by calling two media organizations about 40 minutes before it happened.
In a long -term placement on the website Athens.indymedia.org on Sunday, the perpetrators, who formed themselves the revolutionary class struggle, explained the reasons for their action, of which they said it was part of an armed fight against the state.
Revolutionary class struggle devoted the bomb attacks to “the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance” and brought tribute to Kyriakos Xymitiris, a man who was murdered last year when the explosive device he assembled in an apartment in the Central Athens.
The explosion also came during a widespread public anger about a disaster in 2023, Greece's worst, in which 57 people were killed and dozens were injured when a freight train and a passenger train in opposite directions were accidentally placed on the same track.
The fatal accident has uncovered serious shortcomings in the railway system of Greece, including in safety systems, and has caused massive protests under the leadership of family members of the victims against the conservative government of the country on the occasion of the second anniversary of the accident.
In his statement, which serves as a sort of manifesto, the revolutionary class struggle connects the accident with what it called the “murders” of the proletariat in the form of accidents in the workplace, by capitalists.
Greece has a long history of politically motivated violence dating from the seventies, with domestic extremist groups that perform small -scale bomb attacks that usually cause damage, but rarely lead to injuries.
Although the groups that are most active in the eighties and 1990s are dismantled, new smaller groups have emerged. They call authorities a new generation of domestic extremists.
“With the blood not yet dry, they attributed the (train) accident to the human mistakes and the 'chronic shortcomings of the Greek state', in fact that even more freedom of movement for capital, more privatizations and new attacks on a remaining state infrastructure demands,” the extremist group said.
Hellenic Train, the operator of passenger and freight train services, was once a subsidiary of the State Hellenic Railways. It was split and sold to the Italian Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane in 2017. Hellenic Railways retains ownership and responsibility for the maintenance of the rail infrastructure, including the train stations.
The police say they follow leads, including images of one or two people on security cameras and possible mobile phone calls.
