Commenting on the claim on Wednesday by SYRIZA MP Giorgos Kyritsis that nobody had died in Greece from petrol bombs, the general secretary of the Special Guards unit, Efstratios Mavroidakos, said on Thursday that more than 170 police officers had suffered burns from Molotov cocktails within a year.

Speaking to Skai on Thursday, Mavroidakos urged Kyritsis to visit the 401 Hospital in Athens on any given weekend to witness the burns officers suffer from firebombs hurled at them by self-styled anarchists in the Exarchia district.

He added that Kyritsis’s comments had infuriated officers. “They don’t hurl Molotovs in Exarchia for a laugh; they want officers dead,” he said.

Kyritsis, who was accused of offending the memory of the victims of a deadly firebomb attack on a Marfin Bank branch in central Athens during anti-austerity riots in May 2010, issued an apology on Thursday, saying his statement was wrong and that the reactions to his remarks were “justified.”