ATHENS, Greece – Greek police destroyed a letter bomb sent to the Justice Ministry on Wednesday and warned other government offices to watch out for more potentially booby-trapped packages, fearing a repetition of a spate of such bombings in November.
No injuries were caused by Wednesdays controlled detonation outside the ministry building near central Athens. The booby-trapped package was delivered by courier and had been addressed to the ministers office, with the sender listed as an "independent initiative of lawyers," said police spokesman Athanasios Kokalakis. Staff at the ministry deemed the package suspicious and called the police. The attempted attack was similar to a spate of letter bombs in November during which 14 letter bombs were sent mostly to embassies in the Greek capital.
One of the booby-trapped packages made it to German Chancellor Angela Merkels office in Berlin before being destroyed, while another addressed to Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi caught fire aboard a courier flight that had landed at Italys Bologna airport. "We have a similar package to those sent in November," Kokalakis said of Wednesdays bomb, adding that the letter was believed to have contained a small amount of explosives.