Suspicious Package Detonated at Bulgarian Embassy in Athens

Anti-terrorist police officers investigate the area where a parcel bomb exploded, injuring a courier company employee, in central Athens, Monday. Photo by EPA/BGNES

The Bulgarian Embassy in Athens has notified Greek authorities about a suspicious package on the premises, the local "Sky" radio reported Tuesday.

The package was delivered by a courier, but the name of sender has not been revealed. The Embassy placed the call after a metal detector signaled for the presence of metal inside.

According to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, Vesela Cherneva, the sender was a Greek businessman, Chair of the Greek-Bulgarian Trade Association. He said he did not remember mailing such package.

Greek special task force has arrived at the building and detonated the package thorough a controlled explosion. Detectors, reportedly, discovered traces of an explosive substance inside, but its origin and quantities remain unknown.

Meanwhile, a similar package was detonated outside the Greek Parliament, after an employee of a courier company sensed something wrong with a package addressed to the Chilean Embassy and stopped to hand it to the nearby police patrol, a police officer reported.

Two other unnamed Embassies have reported receiving suspicious parcels.

Also on Tuesday, a bomb exploded in the yard of the Swiss Embassy in the Greek capital, after an employee received a package and threw it outside when becoming suspicious of its contents. There are no reported injuries.

On Monday, another package, destined for the Mexican Embassy, exploded inside the truck of a courier company. The following probe uncovered three other similar parcels, for the Embassies of Belgium and the Netherlands and one addressed to French President, Nickolas Sarkozy. Two people have been arrested.

The two men arrested were a 22-year-old man wanted for participation in the terror group "Conspiracy of Cells of Fire" and a 24-year-old that initially refused to reveal his identity to police and declared himself an "urban guerrilla". The second man was known to police but was not wanted for any particular offence.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nikolay Mladenov, already phoned his Greek counterpart, Dimitris Droutsas, to express gratitude about the quick and professional reaction of authorities in Athens.

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