An 89-year-old man went on a two-stop shooting spree across central Athens on the morning of April 28, opening fire first at a pension office and then at the country's court of appeals, in attacks that have laid bare the social toll of Greece's grinding pension and welfare bureaucracy, Kathimerini reported.

The first incident took place at around 10:30 local time at a branch of EFKA, Greece's principal social security agency, in the Kerameikos district of the capital. The suspect entered the building armed with a hunting rifle and opened fire, wounding an EFKA employee.

The gunman then fled the scene by taxi and travelled across the city to the Athens Court of Appeals on Loukareos Street, where he opened fire a second time. Four people were wounded in the second attack and were taken to the Red Cross Hospital with superficial buckshot injuries to the lower limbs. All were reported to be in stable condition.

The court was evacuated by loudspeaker shortly after the shooting. Police, three ambulances and two motorcycle crews from the EKAB emergency service were dispatched. Authorities later recovered the suspect's hunting weapon.

Witnesses identified the suspect as an 89-year-old waste collector. A motive has not been confirmed.

The targeting of EFKA points to a familiar pressure point in Greek public life. The agency, formed by the merger of the country's main social security funds during the post-2010 economic crisis, has been the focus of long-standing public anger over delays in pension processing, contested benefit calculations and bureaucratic friction.

Cases of elderly Greeks confronting state agencies in often dramatic fashion have recurred over the past decade, against the backdrop of a generation that lived through the country's debt crisis and saw pensions repeatedly cut under the terms of successive bailout programmes between 2010 and 2018.

The choice of the court of appeals as a second target points to a possible legal dispute, although authorities have not disclosed details of any pending case involving the suspect.

Greek police were continuing to investigate at the time of publication.