Package containing explosives sent to Merkel’s office

GERMAN police disarmed a potentially harmful package from Greece at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office yesterday, hours after similar small mail bombs exploded outside the Russian and Swiss embassies in Athens in attacks blamed on Greek far-left extremists.

Greek police destroyed at least three more suspected bombs in Athens, and two local men have been charged with mailing bombs.

Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said the suspicious package intercepted in the mailroom of her office was personally addressed to the chancellor and “would have been able to harm people”. Merkel was not in the building at the time as she was in Belgium.