ATHENS – Gangs who had been targeting a series of targets from Parliament to the Defense Ministry destroyed an office of the ruling Radical Left SYRIZA party with gas bombs made from canisters, drawing fire from the government.
While SYRIZA has been accused of looking the other way and indirectly condoning violence against universities, public transport and other symbols offensive to anarchists, this time it was the Leftists, a party riddled with anarchist and terrorist sympathizers who were in the bulls-eye and they didn’t like it one bit.
“The attack with an incendiary device on SYRIZA’s office in Ilion constitutes a purely criminal and fascist act,” the ruling leftist party said in an announcement.
“The people of the left will not be terrorized by bullies using underground methods,” it added. “The tough battle of getting the country out of the crisis with society still on its feet will continue and will be successfully completed, despite those who wish the opposite.”
That was an apparent reference to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ party reneging on anti-austerity promises and whacking workers, pensioners and the poor with more brutal conditions he said he would reverse before surrendering to international creditors, another favorite anarchist enemy.
The ground-floor office in the northern suburb of Ilion was badly damaged, as the assailants broke the front window and placed a cluster of gas canisters in the building’s interior before setting off the charge in the early hours of Dec. 18, Kathimerini said.
It came not long after anarchists went on a rampage at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and beat up students at the University of Athens with wooden sticks and stole money amid charges from the major opposition New Democracy that SYRIZA has promoted the violence by not prosecuting any of the perpetrators in dozens of attacks.