Greek PM visits firebomb victims memorial

Greek Prime Minister Georges Papandreou laid a wreath Friday at an improvised memorial outside a firebombed Athens bank where three people died last Wednesday during violent anti-austerity protests.

By News Wires (text)

AFP - Greek Prime Minister Georges Papandreou on Friday mourned the three victims of a firebomb attack in Athens by visiting the gutted bank where they died during anti-austerity protests.

Greece mobilises against planned austerity measures

Wearing shirtsleeves, Papandreou placed a flower on an improvised memorial outside the branch of the Marfin bank group on a busy street in the capital, then spoke with passers-by before departing, NET public television reported.

His visit had not been publicised by his office, but it was captured on video by an NET cameraman who was in the vicinity.

A pregnant woman was among the three bank employees killed when hooded youths broke a window and hurled firebombs into the bank on the sidelines of street protests against cutbacks aimed at curbing Greece's debt crisis.

Their deaths shocked public opinion and led President Carolos Papoulias to warn that Greece -- on the verge of becoming the first eurozone nation to default -- had "reached the edge of the abyss".

Labour unions have vowed to keep fighting against the austerity plan, which parliament endorsed on Thursday as a key step towards Greece tapping into an EU-IMF rescue fund.