Greek guerrilla group claims Athens bourse bomb

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's most militant guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Struggle, claimed responsibility on Wednesday for a bomb attack against the Athens stock exchange last week, Greek police said.

The car bomb seriously damaged the bourse building and slightly wounded one woman. The stock market opened normally on the day, despite the blast.

"Revolutionary Struggle has claimed responsibility for the attack at the stock exchange," said a police official who declined to be named.

The guerrilla group said in a pamphlet sent to a weekly newspaper it was protesting the conservative government's measures amid the economic slowdown, police said. The weekly is published every Thursday.

"It criticises the course of Greece's economy and the measures the government took to shield it during the crisis," the official said.

At the time of the explosion in Athens, a bomb also went off outside a government building in northern Greece, causing minor damage. The Fire Conspiracy Cells group claimed responsibility for that bombing.

Greece, which holds snap elections on Oct 4, has been rocked by a series of attacks since the police shooting of a teenager in December sparked the country's worst riots in decades, fuelled by anger at youth unemployment.

The riots and the guerrilla attacks have damaged the popularity of the conservatives, who lag socialists in polls by more than 6 percentage points.

Revolutionary Struggle fired a grenade at the U.S. embassy in Athens in 2007, hitting its facade, and shot and seriously wounded a police officer outside the Culture Ministry in January in revenge for the killing of the 15-year-old by police.

The group emerged in September 2003, after the capture of the deadly November 17 group, which killed 23 Greeks and foreigners in 27 years.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Dominic Evans)