Source: NYTimes.com

Gunmen sprayed Athens riot police with automatic weapons fire early Monday, seriously wounding a policeman in an escalation of violence that erupted last month when a teenager was killed in a police shooting.

The teenager’s death on Dec. 6 sparked Greece’s worst riots in decades, with masked protesters frequently attacking police with gasoline bombs and rocks. But none had caused serious injury.

Monday’s pre-dawn shooting targeted a police unit guarding the Culture Ministry in downtown Athens, police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis said. It was the second such attack against police. On Dec. 23, gunmen fired two automatic rifles at a riot police bus passing a university campus outside the city center, but none of the 20 or so officers on board were injured.

Anti-terrorist police are investigating both shootings.

The wounded policeman, 21-year-old Diamandis Matzounis, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition after six hours of surgery, Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos said. He suffered two bullet wounds, one to the thigh and the other near the shoulder, hitting several vital organs, the hospital said in a statement.

Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos described the attack an attempt to undermine democracy.

”Those who attacked Diamandis Matzounis targeted democracy and order,” Pavlopoulos said after visiting the wounded man.

”They will soon realize that democracy is strong and our society is safeguarded,” he said, adding that ”no bullet and no murderer” could undermine the police force’s morale and sense of duty.

A police official said two men, one with a Kalashnikov-type automatic rifle, had sprayed bullets at the police unit in Exarchia — a downtown area of bars and restaurants that is considered an area favored by radicals.

”They wanted to kill someone in uniform. They sprayed our colleagues with gunfire,” said Stratos Mavroidakos, the head of a police officers’ association.

”People were instigated into taking this action by the prevailing climate,” Mavroidakos said, referring to the near daily violent demonstrations in which youths chanting ”cops, pigs, murderers” have clashed with riot police, set up burning street barricades and torched banks and stores.

”This is what happens when you have 12-year-old children at demonstrations calling police ‘murders’ … These events have set us back 20 years,” he said.

After Monday’s 3:05 a.m. (0105 GMT) attack, patrol cars and riot police buses blocked access to much of Exarchia well into the morning, and forensic investigators in white coveralls collected evidence from the site of the shooting.

A police statement said authorities detained 72 people during the initial search for suspects.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting.

After the Dec. 23 attack against the riot police bus, an anonymous caller had claimed responsibility on behalf of a previously unknown group. It was unclear whether the claim of responsibility was reliable.

At least six serious attacks have been carried out by little-known domestic radical groups in the past five years, including two bombings and the fatal shooting of a policeman by gunmen who stole his automatic weapon.

Most of these attacks were claimed by a group called Revolutionary Struggle.

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