Police defuse hand grenade bomb found outside Dafni precinct

Police bomb disposal experts defused an explosive device comprising a hand grenade on Saturday after receiving an anonymous caller telephoned a threat that the bomb would detonate outside the police precinct in Dafni, southern Athens.

The bomb was found in a bag that had been placed in a small park behind the police precinct. 

The bomb is said to have had an unusual composition: a hand grenade, a timer, a detonator, a battery and an undisclosed amount of explosives. It was destroyed in two controlled explosions.

The anonymous caller who phoned the police shortly before 3 a.m. had warned that the bomb would go off in 40 minutes from then. The caller said the attack would be in memory of Lambros Fountas, a member of Revolutionary Struggle who died in a shootout with police in the area in March 2010.

The incident follows the arrest of Panagiota Roupa, a leading member of Revolutionary Struggle, in February, which put the police's counter-terrorism department on alert for attacks in solidarity with Roupa and her partner, the group's jailed leader Nikos Maziotis.