Rocket fired against the US embassy in Athens

/ Bomb and tell / the wrong people /


So this morning around 6 am local time (GMT +2), a rocket was launched against the US embassy in Athens, which inflicted rather minor damage: a 30 cm hole in the window and, possibly, the destruction of a lavatory. No one was hurt. No one is sure about the identity of the perpetrators of the bombing but there are claims that a militant group calling itself "Revolutionary Struggle" called the Private Security company that was guarding the embassy, to claim responsibility for the attack in what must be a world first: not the police, the authorities or the media, but a private security company. As you might imagine I'm not inclined to take the alleged phone-calls seriously.

Interestingly, Greek TV channels report that the missile fired was of Eastern European origin- possibly East German, this being the first time that I remember that a local armed group would be using Eastern European weapons - if indeed it is a local group - which I doubt, but can't totally dismiss as a possibility. Anyway that's what the TV reports but I'm not ready to trust them on anything...

Despite the unspectacular character of the strike, one should remember that the US embassy in Athens is possibly among the most heavily guarded buildings in the world, and the total failure of both private security and the Greek police to prevent or capture the perpetrators is astonishing - as is the fact that the surveillance cameras in the US embassy failed to spot the attackers.

I'm not sure about the meaning of this attack, I'm not sure who the perpetrators were, but I can report that we're being bombarded (again) here by all sorts of TV "terrorism experts", a serious threat to our nerves and general peace of mind.

Image from in.gr which has a photo-gallery of the bombed embassy.

... And this analysis is almost (but not quite) correct.