Australian tourist in Greek arrest crossfire

An Australian tourist has been injured as Greek police captured one of the country's top fugitives after a shootout in central Athens.

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Police officers guard as Police investigates on July 16, 2014 in a restaurant in central Athens where two tourists were slightly injured during the shootout which led to the arrest of the leading member of the defunct militant outfit Revolutionary Struggle. (AAP)

An Australian man has been caught in the crossfire as Greek police captured far-left extremist Nikos Maziotis - one of the country's top fugitives - after a shootout in central Athens.

"Nikos Maziotis has been arrested," a police source said on Wednesday, adding that a police officer had been injured in the shooting near the tourist district of Monastiraki.

Maziotis and a policeman were injured during the shootout accoridng to media reports.

According to early reports, two male tourists - an Australian and a German - were also lightly hurt in the exchange of fire, the police source said.

Maziotis himself, a leading member of defunct militant outfit Revolutionary Struggle, was more seriously injured, state television Nerit reported.

"I saw a man being taken away with his hands behind his back, he was bleeding profusely," a witness told reporters at the scene.

"I believe he was wearing a wig," she added.

Media reports said Maziotis was armed with a handgun and a grenade, which he threw at the police but failed to explode.

Maziotis, 42, and his companion Panagiota Roupa - also a one-time member of Revolutionary Struggle - had been conditionally released from prison in 2012 and subsequently disappeared.

They have a four-year-old son who was born in an Athens hospital a few months after his parents were imprisoned in 2010.

Revolutionary Struggle, which first emerged in 2003, was once deemed by authorities to be the country's most dangerous far-left organisation and is on EU and US lists of terrorist groups.

The United States put a bounty on the group after it fired a rocket at the US embassy in Athens in 2007 without injuring anyone.


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Australian tourist in Greek arrest crossfire | SBS News