Anarchism in Greece

Strange as it may sound, there is something which connects the deadlocked talks between Greece's leftist-led government and the Church of Greece with the annual clashes around the Athens Polytechnic. It's the blatant inability, or refusal, to change things.

A total of 19 people were arrested by police forces in Athens during clashes with anarchists.

Clashes have broken out in the central Athens neighborhood of Exarchia.

Anarchists barricaded inside the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), also known as the "Polytechnic" are throwing rocks and firebombs at police, while others outside have erected barricades. Police are responding with stun grenades.

Police in northern Greece have set off tear gas and flash grenades during a rally to protest the fatal police shooting of a man in Albania.

Albanian police shot Greek-Albanian dual citizen Constantinos Katsifas over the weekend, saying he opened fire on officers at an ethnic Greek village.

Professors and students at the Philosophy School of the University of Athens on Wednesday held a protest outside the facility over the presence on campus of the anarchist group Rouvikonas.

Self-styled anarchists hurled Molotov cocktails against a riot police unit stationed at the intersection of Patision and Tositsa Streets in the Exarchia district of Athens late on Saturday, authorities said.

In a separate incident, masked youths attacked a riot police contingent guarding the headquarters of socialist PASOK on Harilaou Trikoupi Street.

Police in the northern port city of Thessaloniki has detained eight people, including two minors, following clashes with protesters during a visit by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras for the inauguration of Greece's largest trade fair late Saturday.

Authorities said 15 police officers were injured during the clashes and several shops and cars damaged.

Four suspects, among whom two are minors, have been identified in connection with three attacks against police in the downtown Athens area of Exarchia.

According to a Greek Police (ELAS) announcement on Thursday, the suspects are three males aged 23, 21 and 17, and a teenage girl aged 15.

More than a year after a letter bomb sent from Greece exploded at International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Paris, injuring the employee who opened it, French counterterrorism and judicial officials were in Athens recently to discuss the progress of investigations with their Greek counterparts, Kathimerini has learned.

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis on Friday expressed concern about a recent spike in illegal activities by self-styled anarchists and hit out at the government for failing to curb the phenomenon, accusing it of "surrendering Athens to a wretched minority who aim to become a state within a state."