Gunmen ambush drug-raid convoy in Zoniana; 25 detained in sweep
Gunmen with assault rifles ambushed a 12-jeep police convoy outside Zoniana, Crete, on 5 November 2007, shooting three officers, one critically. Two days later 130 special-forces and local police swept the village, detaining more than 25 suspects and seizing weapons and small quantities of drugs.
On Monday 5 November 2007, gunmen with assault rifles opened fire on a convoy
of about 12 police jeeps outside Zoniana, a remote village in Rethymno
prefecture on Crete, as the officers drove in to search for a major hashish
stash.[1]Three officers on the drug raid were injured, one left in critical
condition with a serious gunshot wound to the head and neck area while the
other two were slightly hurt.[1][2]The raid had been set in motion by the
arrest of a 24-year-old Zoniana man on drug-trafficking charges in Rethymno
the previous Friday.[1]
Sweep of the village
At 7:15 on Wednesday 7 November, 75 heavily armed EKAM special-forces officers
descended on the village with local police, 130 officers in all, setting up
roadblocks and searching houses, farms, sheds and shops with sniffer dogs and
two helicopters overhead.[3]The Supreme Court prosecutor had ordered a
preliminary investigation to bring the gunmen to justice, and 75 police
commandos were flown to Crete to join the operation.[1]Officers detained
more than 25 suspects for weapons, explosives and small quantities of drugs,
and confiscated weapons and ammunition, though no quantities were announced
and the search for hashish plantations in the wider Mylopotamos area
continued.[3]The seriously wounded special guard remained in intensive care
in critical but stable condition, and opposition leader George Papandreou
visited the injured officer at the hospital and expressed support to his
family.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The bulletins give the seriously wounded officer's age as 25 and then 28 and describe the wound first as to the neck and then to the head.
No quantity of cannabis from the stash or the plantations was reported; the sweep found only small unspecified quantities of drugs.
The gunmen who ambushed the convoy were not identified, and no charges or court outcomes for the detained suspects were reported in the opened sources.
The whole account rests on Athens News Agency bulletins; no second newsroom's account of the Zoniana operation was reported.
The bulletins carry a captioned agency photograph of the raid with no direct image address published.
On 19 October 2026 the Narcotics Subdivision of Greece's Organised Crime Directorate arrested three people aged 27, 49 and 54 after finding 27.6 kg of cannabis cuttings in a car near Loutsa and a hydroponic laboratory with 255 plants up to 1.6 m high. Police also seized 120 g of raw cannabis and put potential illicit proceeds above €200,000.
Hellenic Police arrested 11 people, nine of them members of an alleged drug organisation, after an operation on 10 June 2026 against hidden cannabis greenhouses in Corinthia, in the Peloponnese. Searches of the greenhouse, an open-air site and homes turned up 6,620 cannabis plants, 890 grams of unprocessed cannabis, €4,080 in cash and a revolver, and the suspects were to be taken to prosecutors.
Arrested 11Charged 11Plants destroyed 6,620of them seized 6,620
Greek police raided a Greek-Albanian trafficking ring in Attica and Larissa on 19 March 2011, seizing nearly two tonnes of cannabis bound for western Europe. Six suspects were arrested, including the suspected mastermind, a trucking-company owner from Larissa.
Gunmen believed to be hashish growers ambushed a police patrol watching a plantation near Malades, Crete, on the evening of 22 June 2008, shooting three officers, one of them in the head. Police launched a manhunt and sent reinforcements from Athens.
