Parcel explodes in Athens, police detonate two more

A parcel exploded at a courier company in Athens on Monday and police detonated two more bombs wrapped in packages, one carried by two suspects and the other left at another delivery firm in the Greek capital, police said.   

According to initial evidence, the parcel that went off was addressed to the Mexican embassy in Athens, and one of the other two was destined to the Dutch embassy, a police official said.  

"The bomb exploded minutes after two men handed the parcel. A female employee has suffered minor burns," said the police official who declined to be named.                                           

Two suspects were arrested, he said, adding that they were wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying weapons. One of them was a suspected member of a Greek leftist guerrilla group known as the Fire Conspiracy Cells, police said.   

Greece has been rocked by a wave of gas canister and bomb attacks, usually claimed by leftist groups, since the police killing of a teenager in Athens in 2008 sparked Greece's worst riots in decades. 

In June, a booby-trapped package exploded at the ministry in charge of police, killing one of the minister's closest aides.

The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed that a parcel intercepted at the delivery firm was addressed to the Dutch embassy, but declined to comment on the type of explosives or why the Netherlands embassy was targeted.

Earlier, two air packages containing bombs — both sent from Yemen and addressed to synagogues in Chicago — were intercepted in Britain and Dubai on Friday.       

One of the packages was found on a United Parcel Service cargo plane at East Midlands airport, north of London. The other was discovered in a computer printer cartridge in a parcel at a FedEx facility in Dubai.