Cypriot soccer referee's car destroyed by explosion

The car of a Cypriot first-division soccer referee was destroyed by an explosive device which went off outside his house, a police spokesman said on Tuesday.

The spokesman said the device had been placed on the hood of the car at Zygi sea resort south of the capital Nicosia, wrecking the engine, in the early hours of Tuesday.

The referee himself, Giorgos Nicolaou, who was in the house at the time, was unhurt, the spokesman said.

Violence against referees is relatively frequent in Cyprus, with several of them having been targets of bomb explosions or shooting in recent years.

Referees suspended the soccer championship by going on strike for a week in the early stage of the season last year, after a bomb went outside the house of a referee's mother.

The Cyprus Football Association (CFA) deplored the incident in a statement, saying that such actions put in danger human lives and destroy the image of soccer.

Charalambos Skapoulis, the President of the Cyprus Referees Association said he spoke to Nicolaou, who was in panic after the explosion.

Skapoulis said he was puzzled by the incident, as that the referee has neither been involved in any high-profile soccer match nor his work on the field has been criticized by anybody recently. Endit