Firebombing of Athens area media group’s offices; serious damages reported

An Athens-area media group’s headquarters was targeted by unknown assailants in the early morning hours of Wednesday, with three make-shift incendiary devices causing serious damage to the three-storey building hosting the Real News weekly newspaper, radio station and websites.

The Real News offices occupy the first and second floors, with a shipping company located in the third floor, while the ground floor is unoccupied. The third floor sustained the greatest damage.

According to reports, a sound engineer was in the building at the time. She was evacuated by firefighters down a stairwell, and was later treated for mild smoke inhalation.

The specific media group was founded and is managed by well-known Greek television presenter and journalist Nikos Hatzinikolaou, who later charged, on his Instagram account, an attempt to shut down the media outlet.

Such attacks against media and individual journalists are not isolated in Greece.

A powerful bomb was planted outside the Skai group’s coastal Neo Faliro headquarters in southern Athens in December 2018, causing significant damages but no injuries.

A spate of incidents involving the placing of incendiary devices – usually small camping gas cannisters doused with a flammable liquid and ignited – outside apartment buildings where specific journalists, media personalities and even Parliament deputies live, has been recorded recently.

In the past far-left and self-styled anarchist/anti-state groups have mostly claimed responsibility for such attacks.