Concerns about incidents of violence at university faculties peaked on Saturday after assailants wielding wooden sticks attacked students at an Athens University campus on Academias Street in central Athens, sending four of them to the hospital.

There were around 15 assailants, according to witnesses who said they were all wearing crash helmets and holding wooden sticks.

They barged into the theater studies faculty where students were holding a function at around 2 a.m., the witnesses said.

Apart from beating up several students, four of them seriously, the attackers wreaked serious damage to the building. Before fleeing, they stole a box of money that the students had collected at the event.

That incident came just two days after a group of unidentified vandals used iron bars and wooden sticks to wreak serious damage at the University of Macedonia (UOM), in Thessaloniki, northern Greece.