Greece halts foreign postal service over mail bombs

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GREECE HAS SUSPENDED ITS foreign airmail service for 48 hours after a number of suspicious packages were sent to embassies and organisations across Athens and Europe.

Greek police said the service was being halted to allow security checks, according to the BBC.

An extreme left-wing group is suspected of being behind the mail bomb campaign, but no group has claimed responsibility. A number of arrests have already been made, and Greek police are looking for five men in their 20s.

Two mail bombs went off outside the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens this week and another injured a postal worker when it exploded at a sorting office.

The PA reports that by last night, at least 11 mail bombs had been found in Athens and two more were destroyed by authorities at the city’s international airport. One was addressed to an EU court in Luxembourg, and the other to Europol.

Yesterday, a suspicious package was discovered in the mail room of Angela Merkel’s office in Berlin and another one addressed to Silvio Berlusconi was disposed of by bomb experts in Italy.

Deutsche Welle reports that the Berlin package did contain explosive material and had been sent from Greece two days before it reached Merkel’s office.

Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said the mail bomb sent to Berlin had nothing to do with Yemen. Two explosive packages sent from Yemen were intercepted by authorities in Dubai and the UK at the weekend.