Bomb hits Athens stock exchange

A powerful van bomb caused major damage Wednesday to the Athens stock exchange and injured a woman in one of two attacks suspected to have been carried out by far-left militants.

The dawn bomb destroyed six cars, tore through windows on the side of the stock exchange building and caused widespread damage inside but the Athex bourse opened for business after a hurried cleanup operation.

A second bomb hidden in a cooking pot exploded near a government building in the city of Salonika causing some damage but no injuries.

Phone warnings were made before both of the latest attacks in a series that has targeted financial institutions and government buildings.

"I was standing at my kiosk a short distance away, the sound wave from the blast threw me back and lifted my daughter from her chair," an elderly bystander told reporters.

Another man said he saw two persons speeding away on motorbikes against the flow of traffic shortly before police arrived.

Athex chairman Spyros Kapralos spoke of "massive" material damage while a bourse spokesman said the blast caused widespread destruction inside roughly half the building.

"Desks, workstations, cubicles and even ceiling panels were completely destroyed from the ground floor to the fifth on the side of the building facing the explosion," bourse spokesman Simos Spyrou told AFP.

"Fortunately the building is insured against terrorist attack," he said.

Despite the fact that police had sealed off the area after the phoned warning, one woman outside the building was slightly injured.

The device was detonated in a stolen van at about 5:30 am (0230 GMT) just outside the stock exchange building on an avenue in the west of the Greek capital. The explosion also damaged two nearby car dealerships.

Television footage showed debris scattered over a wide area.

Police said the van had been stolen on Monday in another part of Athens.

The smaller bomb in the northern city of Salonika went off in a disused phone relay station behind a government building.

Police said the device bore similarities to an explosive device placed outside the home of a former police minister in July.

The bombings came three days before the inauguration of the Salonika International Fair by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and amid speculation that he could call for early elections this week to end months of government inertia caused by scandals and a razor-thin majority in parliament.

Given the force of the Athens blast, Greek media said suspicion immediately fell on the Revolutionary Struggle group, but officially, police would not be drawn on the question.

"It was a powerful explosion, it was apparently a makeshift timed device," police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis told NET state television.

"All the evidence points to something serious, a terrorist strike... but we should not be speculating on (extremist group) names at this stage," he said.

Revolutionary Struggle is best known for a rocket attack on the US embassy in 2007 and features on a European Union's list of terrorist groups.

This year it claimed responsibility for a powerful car bomb placed outside the Athens headquarters of US banking group Citibank that was defused by police.

A month later, it exploded an bomb outside a Citibank branch in the Athens suburb of Psychiko that caused significant damage.

Bombers also attacked an Athens tax office in July and a branch of Eurobank in May.

An explosion also went off in April outside a building in Athens which housed a branch of Greek bank Alpha and the offices of Cetelem, a member of French banking group BNPParibas.

Leftist extremists have launched a number of attacks on police targets since riots last December triggered by the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old youth.

While bomb attacks against foreign and domestic banks and other targets have become more frequent in recent months, they are usually organised to avoid causing injury.