Riots rocked Athens and other university towns across Greece yesterday after a teenager was shot dead in a midnight confrontation with police in an inner-city district frequented by extremist youths.

As news of the shooting spread hundreds of hooded and helmeted protesters poured into three central districts in Athens, hurling petrol bombs and stones at shopfronts, banks, parked cars and squads of police trying to control the mayhem. Twenty-four policemen were injured.

Patrons in bars in the popular Monastiraki district fled as the youths, chanting “Death to the pigs”, set fire to doorways and gutted at least one office building. Looters emptied the shop windows.

Rioters in the heavily-policed district of Exarchia, where the shooting occurred, set on fire bank branches and anything parked outside them. Police and crowds of extremists later faced off in central Athens.

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• Riots in Greece

Rioting also erupted in at least four big university towns around Greece – Salonika, Patras, Heraklion and Ioan-nina. Protesters in Salonika attacked the city hall, two police stations, shops and a bank.

Witnesses said that the trouble began shortly after midnight on Saturday when several dozen young people sitting at outdoor cafés in the centre of Athens hurled insults at a passing patrol car. The car stopped and two policemen got out to confront the youths.

After what seems to have been a heated exchange, one of the policemen drew his weapon and fired three times, once towards the ground and twice in the air. Andreas Grigoropou-los, a 15-year-old, collapsed with a bullet in his chest and was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the Interior Minister, appeared on national television yesterday to pledge a “thorough investigation” into the boy’s death, as the centre-Right Government appealed for calm and conspicuously avoided justifying the police action.

Last night two policemen were arrested over the killing. The officer who fired that fatal shot was charged with manslaughter, and his colleague with being an accessory.

Mr Pavlopoulos went so far as to call any subsequent protests “justified”, in an apparent attempt to forestall attacks from the Socialist Opposition, which has been pulling ahead in the opinion polls.

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