The Extortion Unit of the Hellenic Police’s Special Violent Crime Division, widely known as the “Greek FBI”, has taken over the investigation into a fire that tore through a café in the northern Athens suburb of Nea Ionia in the early hours of Monday.

The blaze broke out at around 4.30am in the café on the ground floor of a building on Kastamonis Street, causing extensive damage to the premises and to the apartments on all three floors above.

Investigators are treating the fire as suspected arson. According to protothema.gr, evidence found at the scene may point to a deliberate attack, and firefighters who brought the flames under control reportedly concluded that the fire could not have been accidental. Other possible causes, including a gas cylinder, have not been formally ruled out.

Residents said they heard a blast from the café shortly before the fire took hold, with some witnesses describing three separate explosions. One woman said the flames had spread across almost the entire building within about half an hour.

The fire service sent 18 firefighters, five appliances and an aerial ladder platform to the scene. Crews rescued several residents, some of them from the roof, before bringing the blaze under control.

The café changed hands within the past year and is now registered to a 22-year-old foreign national. The owner, reported to be Syrian, was giving a statement to the Extortion Unit on Monday and is said to have told officers he had received no threats.

Police are examining whether the fire is linked to a recent string of attacks on foreign-owned shops in central Athens, and whether the order may have been given from inside a prison. Officers are collecting CCTV footage from the surrounding area and will apply for access to phone records.

Fatal shooting in 2023

The same café was the scene of a shooting in February 2023 that killed a 37-year-old Albanian man, a bystander with no connection to the dispute.

The trouble began when a group of seven Albanian men, alleged by police sources to be members of a criminal gang, arrived at the café and began arguing before they had even sat down.

The group then moved out onto the street, where one of them drew a pistol and opened fire. The 37-year-old was hit in the collarbone, and the seven men fled.

He was taken to KAT General Hospital in Kifissia, where he died shortly before 3am from severe blood loss.