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Greece halts foreign mail deliveries amid parcel bomb scare

03 November 2010 03:35 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Greece suspended deliveries of foreign-bound mail for 48 hours, shortly after a plane from Athens made an emergency landing over parcel bomb scare, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.

About a dozen of mail bombs went off or were intercepted by police in Athens in the past two days, no injuries were reported. Two suspects were arrested and five more are wanted in connection with the incidents.

"At the suggestion of the Greek police, the Civil Aviation Service resolved to suspend foreign mail deliveries for 48 hours for additional safety checks," a spokeswoman for the Greek police told RIA Novosti.

Late on Tuesday, a Rome-bound plane from Greece made an emergency landing after a suspicious parcel addressed to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found onboard. The parcel is now being examined.

Several hours earlier, two suspect packages destined to go to Europol and to the European Court of Justice were found at the cargo terminal of the Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens. Both parcels were found to contain explosives and were destroyed by police.

On Tuesday a suspicious parcel was discovered in the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A bomb addressed to French President Nicholas Sarkozy was intercepted in Athens on Monday.

A series of bomb scares were also reported at embassies in the Greek capital this week.

On Tuesday a mail bomb was allegedly detonated in the Swiss embassy, while another went off near the Russian embassy. Three parcel bombs, addressed to the embassies of Bulgaria, Germany and Chile were intercepted and destroyed by a controlled blast.

Two bombs, one destined to the Dutch embassy and the other to the Mexican embassy, were discovered on Monday. One of them exploded in the hands of a female worker at a private delivery company.

Two men were arrested in connection with the attempt on the Dutch embassy. One is believed to have ties with a Greek far-left militant group.