Greek anti-terror squad investigates big blast that killed a man in an Athens apartment

ATHENS, Greece -- Greece's anti-terrorist squad is investigating a strong explosion on Thursday that wrecked an Athens apartment, killing a man and severely injuring a woman, police said.

Police spokeswoman Constantina Dimoglidou said the identity of the victim was unknown, while the injured woman was not in a position to help authorities due to the gravity of her condition.

She said explosives experts were investigating the scene of the explosion in an apartment block in the Greek capital's central district of Ambelokipi.

A team of 23 firefighters who responded to the incident freed the injured woman from the wreckage. They used sniffer dogs to search the apartment for other survivors, later locating the man's body, the fire service said.

Initial suspicions that the blast was caused by a gas leak were not confirmed. Authorities are now examining the possibility that an explosive device was inadvertently detonated in the flat.

State-run ERT television reported that at least one handgun was found in the apartment.

The explosion demolished internal and external walls in the third-floor apartment, blew away its balcony railings and damaged neighboring properties.

Greece has a decades-old history of far-left extremism involving small urban groups. The major groups that carried out a string of assassinations from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s have been eradicated and their members jailed.

They were succeeded by smaller and less efficient groups which mostly staged bomb attacks on symbols of state authority and wealth but had been largely dormant in recent years.