Greek Security Crackdown: 3 Arrested Over Friday Firebombings Targeting Ruling Party Homes

ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s counter-terrorism police arrested three people on Friday, July 10, 2026 in connection with a coordinated string of predawn firebombing that targeted the homes of ruling conservative New Democracy party politicians. The July 1 attacks in the northern port city of Thessaloniki left one person dead and four others injured.

The coordinated onslaught saw attackers place flaming camping gas canisters outside three residential buildings linked to local New Democracy figures. While the first two explosions caused only material damage, the third proved catastrophic.

A crude device detonated directly beneath a vehicle belonging to parliamentary candidate Afroditi Nestora. The resulting inferno killed Nestora's 72-year-old mother, who succumbed to severe burn injuries. Nestora herself suffered burns and remains hospitalized, while her father and two other building residents were also treated for injuries.

Following an intense, multi-day investigation analyzing surveillance footage, authorities tracked the suspects across Greece. The Citizens’ Protection Ministry confirmed the arrest of three individuals, including a 29-year-old man apprehended within Thessaloniki and a 26-year-old woman captured on the southern island of Crete. A third male suspect was also taken into custody, accused of hiding the duo in his apartment before and after the fatal assault.

Police have linked the primary suspects directly to the third, fatal attack, and are continuing to hunt for other potential co-conspirators. "The blood spilled and division sown by the extremes will no longer be tolerated," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a harsh condemnation of the incident, labeling it "blind violence in public life."

While Greece has a decades-long history of domestic extremist and anarchist groups launching low-intensity symbolic bombings, this incident marks the first political assassination fatality the country has seen in more than ten years. Security forces remain on high alert as anti-terrorism units expand their net to dismantle the modern cells behind this latest wave of radical violence.