Special forces arrest 80 anarchists at Athens squat

The face-off centred on the Villa Amalia site, whose occupants were forcibly evicted by police on December 20.

Several anarchists also mounted a short-lived occupation today of offices belonging to the Democratic Left party, which has collaborated in pushing through a relentless barrage of cuts ordered by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund in return for multibillion-pound bail-out loans.

Leftist opposition group Syriza, which retains a pro-EU stance despite the economic punishment meted out by the bloc, condemned the occupation of party offices but hit out at police tactics that it branded a "strategy of suppression and diversion."

The group said: "We are not going to make a big issue out of a minor one when most households are literally freezing because they can't pay the electricity bill or buy heating fuel or when dozens of businesses are closing down while millions of unemployed are being crushed on the margins of society."