The killing of a Greek-Albanian gunman by Albanian police has caused new tensions between the two countries and sparked allegations that the officers overreacted.
Two violent incidents have been recorded in Greece allegedly linked to the killing of an ethnic Greek, Kostandinos Kacifa, who was shot dead by Albanian police at the weekend.
In the first, a group of Albanians and Greeks clashed in Athens on Monday, while in the early hours of Tuesday, a shop in the Greek capital serving as a travel agency for Albania was attacked with home-made firebombs, Albanian and Greek media reported.
Kacifa was shot after he allegedly opened fire on Albanian police with a Kalashnikov on Sunday in the southern village of Bularat near the border with Greece.
The ethnic Greek-populated village was celebrating Oxi Day, a major Greek holiday commemorating the start of the Italo-Greek war in 1940, at the time.
The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Albanian ambassador to Athens to complain on Monday, while various Greek organisations protested that the killing was unnecessary.
Vangjel Dule, a political representative of the Greek minority in Albania and an MP for the opposition, called the Albanian police’s conduct “unprofessional”.
Speaking to Albanian media, villagers from Bularat claimed that Kacifa had opened fire on an Albanian police car, but the fact that the car was empty when he fired the shots showed that he didn’t intend to kill anyone.
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