A 60-year-old Greek man is accused of stabbing two American tourists who were in Athens visiting the Acropolis, the site of the Parthenon, on Tuesday.
The attack took place around 8 a.m. when the alleged attacker approached the man, 53, and woman, 48.
The Greek stabbed at the pair, injuring the man’s hand and the woman’s leg, the Hellenic Police said in a release posted online by the Greek police news site Policenet.
The tourists, unnamed by authorities, are Greek Americans, according to The Associated Press.
“It was a few minutes after 8 in the morning when the incident occurred. A queue of tourists and visitors had already formed who wanted to get their tickets. Then a man brandishing a knife began to threaten the tourists and passersby, and then attacked the two tourists from the USA,” Yiannis Papadopoulos, the assistant chief guard at the Acropolis, told the Greek news site Enikos.
Police immediately responded and arrested the accused attacker, then sent the two tourists to the hospital for treatment.
Michalis Giannakos, head of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees union, said neither of the injuries is life-threatening and that medical officials were mulling whether to keep the tourists in the hospital, according to the Greek news site To Vima.
The alleged assailant, unnamed publicly by authorities, claims to be homeless and has a criminal history that includes an arrest for insulting a person in June and an arrest for knife possession in 2019, according to Zougla, another Greek news site.
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