Cache of grenades from Greek civil war discovered
Schoolchildren find weapons on road construction site
9/26/2012THESSALONIKI, Greece — Greek authorities say schoolchildren playing on a road construction site have stumbled on hundreds of hand grenades stashed away during the civil war.
Army officials in the northern town of Serres say explosives disposal experts had removed and safely defused more than 400 Russian-made grenades by Wednesday.
It was unclear how many more were in the cache. The weapons were found over the weekend by children after heavy rains eroded the road, which is being resurfaced.
The Greek civil war was fought between 1946-49 by nationalist government forces and Communist former partisans from the anti-Nazi resistance. The Communists were defeated but the particularly savage conflict and ensuing repression of the Left haunted Greek society and politics for decades.