On Tuesday, a shooting attacker carried out two connected shooting attacks at public facilities in the heart of Athens, Greece, leaving multiple people injured, Greek law enforcement confirmed. A wide-ranging police manhunt was immediately launched to track down the suspect, who local Greek media has identified as an 89-year-old man.
According to police statements, the incident began when the suspect, armed with a shotgun, opened fire inside a local social security office located in central Athens. One employee of the office was hurt in the first attack. Responding officers reached the scene quickly to administer first aid to the wounded worker, but the shooter managed to escape before officers could secure the area.
Shortly after the first shooting, authorities confirmed the same suspect was responsible for a second attack on the ground floor of a nearby courthouse, also situated in central Athens. Several additional people were wounded in this second incident, and law enforcement later recovered the shotgun used in both attacks at the scene.
Footage captured by Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT shows emergency medical teams moving at least three injured people from the courthouse to waiting ambulances for transport to local hospitals. As of the latest update, the full motive behind the coordinated attacks remains unconfirmed by authorities. ERT’s reporting notes that after carrying out the courthouse shooting, the suspect reportedly scattered a series of envelopes containing documents across the floor, claiming the papers contained his reasons for the violence.
Alexandros Varveris, director of Greece’s National Social Security Fund (commonly referenced by its Greek acronym EFKA), shared more detailed on-the-ground context of the first attack. Varveris explained the shooter traveled to the fourth floor of EFKA’s Kerameikos district office, warned a specific employee to “duck” before opening fire, and accidentally struck a different employee in the leg. The suspect had managed to conceal the shotgun under a long trenchcoat to avoid detection when entering the building, Varveris added.
“He entered the building, took the elevator to the fourth floor, raised his shotgun, ordered one employee to duck, and ended up hitting another staff member,” Varveris told ERT radio in an interview, noting that the injured victim did not appear to be the gunman’s intended target. First responders applied a tourniquet to the wounded employee’s leg at the scene before transferring him to a nearby hospital for further treatment.
Notably, gun violence remains a relatively rare occurrence in Greece, a country where legal gun ownership is permitted but subject to extremely strict national regulations.