Α 51-year-old American tourist who sustained life-threatening injuries when a powerful firecracker exploded in a crowded church courtyard during Easter celebrations on Saturday on the southeastern Aegean island of Santorini, was taken off life support on Thursday.

The tragic accidental killing of a 40 year old on Crete during celebratory gunshots fired as a custom, on the island, have led to numerous calls to curtail illegal firearms that are a tradition among Cretans, but none were so inflammatory as the ones uttered by retired politicians Theodoros Pangalos.

SYRIZA president Alexis Tsipras is campaigning in Crete with the catchphrase “vote for Greece or for Merkel”. In an island full of disenfranchised socialist voters who used to give PASOK party huge majorities in the 1980s and 1990s, Tsipras hopes that he can capture some of these votes.