Booby-trap blast injures former Greek PM Papademos

A former Greek prime minister was injured when a booby-trapped package exploded in his car in central Athens on Thursday in the worst act of violence targeting politicians in the crisis-hit country for several years.

Lucas Papademos, who served a brief stint as caretaker prime minister in late 2011 to mid-2012, did not have life threatening injuries, authorities said. An Athens hospital source told Reuters he was being treated for superficial wounds to his abdomen and a slightly deeper injury to his right leg.

Papademos, 69, a former central banker who held a senior role in the European Central Bank, was hurt when the package he opened in his car exploded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Greece has a history of small-scale attacks against politicians, businesses and police.

A Greek urban guerrilla group is thought to have dispatched a batch of letter bombs addressed to European public figures and discovered by Greek authorities in March.

But Thursday’s blast, in which a hospital official said two others in the vehicle were also hurt, was the most prominent since a booby-trapped package killed a guard for the then public order minister, Michalis Chrysohoidis, in 2010.

Papademos, a low-key economist who is more of a technocrat than a politician, was catapulted to the forefront of Greece’s debt crisis when he was coaxed into briefly becoming caretaker prime minister from late 2011 to May 2012, fusing a fragile governing coalition between socialists and conservatives.