THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — One person died and three others were injured in three pre-dawn firebomb attacks that struck the homes of members of Greece’s governing conservative New Democracy party, authorities said Wednesday.
The attacks between 4 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. outside apartment buildings in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki used crude explosive devices made with camping gas canisters. All the injuries were sustained from the last of the three
attacks, where cars and motorcycles were set ablaze, police said.
One of the cars reportedly was owned by a parliamentary candidate for the New Democracy party, Afroditi Nestora. Nestora suffered burns but her mother succumbed to her burn injuries in an intensive care unit. Two other residents in the apartment building were also hospitalized, police said.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who also heads New Democracy, traveled to Thessaloniki to visit the injured in hospital Wednesday afternoon. Mitsotakis called the death confirmation of the "blind violence in public life.”
“The blood spilled and division sown by the extremes will no longer be tolerated," Mitsotakis said in a written statement. “The legitimacy of the State and the unity of society must now cast terrorism to where it belongs: the margins!”
The prime minister said Greece earned its economic resurgence with toil and painfully overcame its past internal divisions. “It will never turn back,” he added.
Attacks by shadowy Greek militant groups against symbols of power or the property of politicians, police or other authority figures are relatively frequent. Most cause material damage but no injuries.
In July 2025, a bomb exploded outside the Thessaloniki home of the president of Greece’s association of prison guards. He was unharmed but two other people suffered minor injuries from shattered glass.
In June 2024, a police officer guarding the home of a top judge in Athens was injured in a gasoline bomb attack.
“The world of New Democracy will not be terrorized,” the party's political committee secretary Konstantinos Kyranakis said in a statement. The attacks “were a proper terrorist attack on the homes of New Democracy members,” he said, adding that “those who carried it out aimed to kill.”
“Let those who, for years, have cultivated a culture of tolerance toward political violence reflect on their responsibilities,” Kyranakis said.
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Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed to this report.
