AFP/Athens

Greece’s new socialist government yesterday faced its first test against extremism after an automatic weapons attack on a police station injured six officers, two of them seriously.

Gunmen on motorbikes strafed the police station in a northern suburb of Athens, Agia Paraskevi, on Tuesday night. A total of 99 cartridges were later recovered from the scene and authorities said two Kalashnikov rifles were used.

A grenade pin was also found but it was not immediately clear if one of the officers had used a flash grenade against the attackers.

A trainee policewoman hit in the lung after being shot in the back was in serious condition, needing an all-night operation to save her life.

A patrolman was also shot in the abdomen and legs, while the remaining four officers received lighter injuries. A passer-by was also hospitalised after suffering a nervous collapse following the attack.

Police noted that the strike had been carefully prepared and timed to coincide with a guard change outside the station, catching the officers in the open.

It also came on the eve of a national holiday commemorating Greek resistance to Fascist Italy in World War II and a day after the government put a bounty on three bank robbery suspects believed to have links with far-left extremism.

Greece’s top police official, Citizen’s Protection Minister Michalis Chrysohoidis, said the victims are alive “purely by chance” and that the attack could have caused more harm.

“The station is in a thickly inhabited area. There was a great possibility that a passer-by, a mother or a child could have been hit,” he told a news conference.

“This is a blind strike targeting all of Greek society. A blind strike against democracy, against the rule of law,” he said. “These cowardly murderers will be arrested and brought to justice.”

Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday visited the injured officers in hospital before departing for a scheduled trip to Sweden.

Police said they are investigating three stolen motorbikes believed to have been used in the attack that were found abandoned at a train station.

There was no claim of responsibility, although similar attacks have been carried out in the past by two militant groups.

They are the extreme-left group Revolutionary Struggle, active since 2003 and listed by the European Union and US as a terrorist organisation, and the Revolutionary Sect which appeared early this year.

Revolutionary Sect has threatened to indiscriminately kill police officers, noting in a February letter heralding its appearance that “from now on, the life of every cop is not worth more than a bullet.”

Leftist extremists have launched a number of attacks on police targets since riots last December triggered by the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old youth.

Revolutionary Struggle in January ambushed a police patrol and nearly killed a young officer. In June, Revolutionary Sect murdered an anti-terror officer outside the home of a witness in the trial of another left-wing militant group.

The socialists came to power earlier this month with pledges to crack down on left-wing militancy.

Chrysohoidis was public order minister in 2002 when police succeeded in dismantling the country’s deadliest far-left organisation called November 17, blamed for 23 murders between 1975 and 2000, including two police officers.

But the recent attacks have put renewed heat on the police and Chrysohoidis told parliament last week that the department “has gone to pieces.”

Police were heavily criticised in December for failing to stop the riots and looting that followed the Athens teenager’s fatal shooting.

The department is nominally headless since last week when Chrysohoidis sacked its chief over the arrest of a number of left-wing figures which the minister criticised as overzealous.