Greek guerrillas claim police shooting and other attacks

The Revolutionary Struggle urban guerrillas said in a pamphlet sent to a weekly publication they were behind the shooting, which left a 21-year-old police officer seriously wounded, as well as an attack on a police bus in December and the foiled bombing of Shell's headquarters in Athens.

"The anti-terrorist squad has gone to the Pondiki weekly's offices and is investigating," police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis told Reuters.

The January 5 shooting of a riot policeman guarding the Culture Ministry followed Greece's worst rioting in decades in December, triggered by the police killing of a teenager and fuelled by anger at government scandals and economic hardship.

About a year after the capture of the deadly November 17 leftist urban guerrilla group in 2002, Revolutionary Struggle emerged as Greece's most violent militant group with a series of bombings aimed at ministries and police.

Its most audacious action was a rocket propelled grenade attack against the U.S. embassy in January 2007, in which no-one was injured, but the group had fallen quiet for nearly a year and police believed it to be inactive.

It has regularly claimed responsibility for its attacks in statements published in the Pondiki satirical weekly.

(Reporting by Daniel Flynn and Renee Maltezou)