Greek police find bomb planted outside labour ministry

Police found the device in a rucksack propped up against the shutters of the ministry.

Greek police found and later detonated an explosive device that had been left outside the labour ministry in central Athens on Monday, police sources said, after a newspaper was tipped off that a bomb had been planted.

The Greek national flag waving against a grey sky. (Reuters)

Police found the device in a rucksack propped up against the shutters of the ministry, on a central thoroughfare in Athens. It was one of three suspect packages that police examined on the scene and then destroyed in controlled blasts.

Earlier, a telephone call to a Greek newspaper had warned that a blast outside the ministry was imminent.

There was no claim of responsibility for the incident.

Such attacks are not uncommon in Greece, which has a long history of political violence. Small-scale attacks have escalated since 2010, when the government first adopted unpopular austerity measures in exchange for multi-billion-euro bailouts from the European Union and the IMF.