December 15, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 16, 1429

ATHENS, Dec 14: Greek students announced fresh rallies on Sunday after a night of violence during which hooded militants firebombed an Athens police station in fresh protests over the police shooting of a teenager.

About a hundred protestors attacked the police station Saturday night, next to the Exarchia district where 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos died from a police bullet eight days ago.

The attack, unleashed moments after vigils marked one week since the boy’s death, triggered a wave of violence across the Greek capital with banks targeted and a stand-off between riot police and youths outside parliament.

The police station was where two officers awaiting trial over the killing were based, near the Athens Polytechnic university where protest leaders say they are planning sustained action.

At about the same time late Saturday, similar numbers of angry youths in Thessaloniki, Greece’s northern second city, vandalised a gymnasium before retreating behind university walls ahead of coordinated assemblies on Sunday.

Greece’s constitution bans police from entering educational establishments, a legacy of a crackdown on a 1973 student protest against the country’s then military dictatorship in which 44 demonstrators were killed.

Riot police later moved in to surround about 200 youths stationed on parliament square and drove the crowd away at around 2:00am. Police on Sunday said they made 86 arrests over the course of Saturday’s protests.

A police source said youths hurled Molotov cocktails and set off fires at three banks near the Polytechnic. Protesters also targeted an environment ministry office, torching two luxury cars and blocking roads with blazing bins.—AFP