Firebomb attacks on Greece ruling party homes kill one, injure four

Firebomb attacks on homes linked to Greece’s governing New Democracy party killed one woman and injured four other people in Thessaloniki, in a burst of violence that hit private residences rather than party offices. The three pre-dawn attacks unfolded within about 17 minutes, striking the Pylaia, Toumba and Analipsi-Charilaou areas and leaving vehicles burned and families shaken.

Greek police said the devices were improvised explosive and incendiary bombs made with camping gas canisters. In the final attack, cars and motorcycles were set ablaze, and one of the cars reportedly belonged to a New Democracy parliamentary candidate. Five people were hospitalized in all, including one woman who suffered extensive burns, was intubated and later died in hospital.

The deaths and injuries pushed the episode beyond a property crime and into a direct assault on elected officials’ circle of safety. By targeting apartment buildings and family homes in Thessaloniki, the attackers struck at the places where politicians and their relatives are least protected, underscoring how political violence in Greece can spill from public confrontation into domestic spaces.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis condemned the attacks as a cowardly, terrorist and murderous act and vowed zero tolerance. Greek police opened an investigation through the Anti-Terrorist Unit in Thessaloniki, and authorities suspect a single group carried out the coordinated strikes.

The attack fits a long-running pattern of militant bombings and arson in Greece aimed at politicians, police and other symbols of authority. Such attacks have been described as relatively frequent, and the country has seen similar violence in recent months, including a July 2025 bomb attack outside the Thessaloniki home of the president of Greece’s association of prison guards and a June 2024 gasoline-bomb attack that injured a police officer guarding a top judge’s home in Athens.

For New Democracy, the ruling conservative party, the Thessaloniki firebombings exposed how quickly intimidation can move from demonstrations and threats to the homes of lawmakers and their families. With one person dead, four others hurt and several neighborhoods rattled by coordinated blasts, the case now sits at the center of a broader test of whether Greece can keep political conflict from hardening into a deeper security crisis.