Bomb wrecks broker’s car

A BOMB blast yesterday caused extensive damage to the car of a Paphos stockbroker. It was the second incident in four days involving the same broker.

On Saturday, police had received an anonymous phone call telling them there were drugs under the passenger seat of the broker’s Mitsubishi Pajero.

Police looked into the case, then arrested two Limassol men suspected of trying to frame the broker. The two men were up in court yesterday. Earlier yesterday, a pipe bomb placed under Antonis Miltiadous’ brand new BMW exploded, causing extensive damage to the engine.

The car was parked on the parking lot at the apartment building on Alexandroupoleos Street where Miltiadous lives. The blast also damaged two other cars and shattered the windows of adjacent flats and houses.

Terrified residents rushed out of their homes wondering what had happened, while the more composed tried to put out the fire in the engine with extinguishers before it spread.

Residents said it was a miracle no one had been hurt in the blast. If the bomb had gone off a few minutes later, it would have caught a resident who had just got off work and who usually parked his car next to the broker’s BMW.

Police suspect the same people are behind both incidents. Yesterday, Paphos district court ordered the eight-day remand of George Georgiou, aged 30, and Renos Kyriacou, 30, both from Limassol, in connection with the drugs found in Miltiadous’ car.

After Saturday’s tip-off, police had found 51 grams of cannabis and one-and- a-half grams of a substance thought to be heroin under the passenger seat of the broker’s second car. Police said the Pajero had been broken into, and that Miltiadous was not in any way connected to the drugs found.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.