Live ammunition was fired at a police car in the evening of December 23.

Unidentified attacker have hit a riot police bus in the Greek capital Athens, there were no reported casualties, but it has come as a message to the Greek authorities that they will have their hands full during the holidays. The shots hit the vehicle, bursting a tyre, which occurred outside the Politechniu, the Greek University, notorious for many clashes in the last decades.

Politechniu was the scene of a massacre in 1973 and the formation of the Marxist paramilitary group, November 17. The group's name, 17N, refers to the final day of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising, protests against the Greek Military Junta (1967 - 1974) also known as the Regime of the Colonels.  The 1973 uprising started when a tank took down the main gate of the Polytechniu and security forces, including soldiers, stormed the campus. 17N self-identified as Marxist. In addition to assassinations, members of 17N have been convicted for a number of bank robberies. Members of 17N claim they stole money to finance their activities. Members of N17 are held responsible for the assassination of many American military personnel, Turkish press attaches and other officials, as well as the assassination of the British Brigadier Stephen Saunders, a military attachŽ in Athens who was killed on June 8 2000 by motorcycle gunmen, members of 17N.

Since 1973, when the Army and the tanks stormed the Polytechnic university and killed scores of students, the Greek legislation has passed a law whereby it is forbidden for the police or army to ever set foot on the soil of the University, unless direct permission is given by the Dean himself.

Consequently, the Polytechnic university and the area around it, Exarchia Square, are seen as the stronghold of Greek anarchists. Thus, every year on November 17, Greek anarchists, skinheads, university students, KKE (Greek Communist Party) and many others congregate for peaceful marches from the University, located on Patission Avenue, up to Vassilis Sofias avenue where the US embassy is located, with fights and hooliganism usually occurring later in the evenings around the notorious Exarchia Square, Stadiu Street, Omonia Square and the Polytechnic University.

This year, the November 17 marches went relatively peacefully with the riots being not as serious as in previous years.

However, the shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Exarchia square sparked the biggest riots in Greece since 1973, with hundreds of stores destroyed. The material damages of the riots are yet to be determined.

The policeman accused of shooting Grigoropoulos has been arrested and charged with murder. He insists the teenager was killed by a ricochet.