Police guard the Israeli Embassy after a pre-dawn attack in Athens on Friday. Photo: AP

Athens: Greek authorities said on Friday that a morning gun attack on the Israeli Embassy used the same weapons as and closely resembled a similar attack on the residence of the German ambassador a year ago.

Neither attack caused any casualties or serious damage.

Witnesses told police that four assailants had arrived on motorcycles about 3am and that two had raked the embassy building with Kalashnikov fire. A police spokesman said authorities would await a review of footage from the embassy's surveillance camera to corroborate those accounts.

According to a police statement, ballistics tests on 54 bullet casings found in front of the embassy building, in the capital's affluent northern suburbs, showed that the shots were fired from two Kalashnikov rifles used in a similar attack in December 2013 on the German ambassador's home, also in northern Athens.

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Responsibility for that attack was claimed by an organisation called the Group of Popular Rebels, which also said it had carried out a shooting at the offices of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' New Democracy party in January last year.

New York Times