Seven wounded in gun attack

One policeman, who was guarding the police station at the time of the attack, was in a serious condition, said the official.

“Our response will be immediate and resolute,” Civil Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis, who has made combating guerrilla groups a top priority, told reporters after visiting some of the wounded at an Athens hospital.

“Coward murderers will be arrested and brought before justice,” he said.

The far-left Rebel Sect urban guerrilla group claimed responsibility for the killing of an anti-terrorism policeman in June, the worst attack since the December riots.

A little-known group, The Council for the Deconstruction of Order, said yesterday it was responsible for makeshift bomb attacks outside the party offices of a minister and a deputy minister last week in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Police said two Kalashnikov rifles were used. Initial reports indicated four assailants but later evidence suggested that as many as six people could have been involved.

A grenade pin was also found, leading police to assume that the assailants used a flash grenade to cover their retreat.

A trainee policewoman hit in the lung after being shot in the back was in serious condition, needing an all-night operation to save her life.

A patrolman was also shot in the abdomen and legs, while the remaining four officers received lighter injuries. A passerby was also hospitalised after suffering a nervous collapse following the attack.

Police noted that the strike had been prepared days previously and timed to coincide with a guard change outside the station, catching the officers in the open.

It came on the eve of a national holiday commemorating Greek resistance to Fascist Italy in World War II and a day after the government put a bounty on three bank robbery suspects believed to have links with far-left extremism.

Chrysohoidis said the victims are alive "purely by chance" and that the attack could have caused more harm.

"The station is in a thickly inhabited area. There was a great possibility that a passerby, a mother or a child could have been hit," he told a news conference.

Police said they are investigating three stolen motorbikes believed to have been used in the attack that were found abandoned at a metro station.

There was no claim of responsibility, although similar attacks have been carried out in the past by two militant groups.

They are the extreme-left group Revolutionary Struggle, active since 2003 and listed by the European Union and United States as a terrorist organisation, and the Revolutionary Sect which appeared early this year.

Revolutionary Sect has threatened to indiscriminately kill police officers, noting in a February letter heralding its appearance that "from now on, the life of every cop is not worth more than a bullet."

Chrysohoidis was public order minister in 2002 when police dismantled the country's deadliest far-left organisation, called November 17, blamed for 23 murders between 1975 and 2000, including two police officers.

But the recent attacks have put renewed heat on the police and Chrysohoidis told parliament last week that the department "has gone to pieces."

Police were heavily criticised in December for failing to stop the riots and looting that followed the Athens teenager's fatal shooting.

The department is nominally headless since last week when Chrysohoidis sacked its chief over the arrest of a number of left-wing notables which the minister criticised as overzealous.