Man jumps off Acropolis in apparent suicide bid

ATHENS - Agence France-Presse

AFP photo

A 45-year-old man was seriously injured on Thursday after jumping from the Acropolis in Athens in an apparent suicide bid, a site guard said.
 
"The man jumped and fell on to the Theatre of Dionysus below," the guard told AFP. "He was alone and did not seem to be in a normal mental state." Police said the incident occurred at 0630 GMT at a time when Greece's top archaeological site, an ancident citadel on a rocky plateau above Athens, is visited by scores of tourists.
 
The man was taken to hospital with serious head injuries after the 100-metre (300-foot) drop and is not expected to survive, a police source said.
 
Suicides are on the rise in Greece as the country slogs through a five-year recession that has left over a million people jobless. Salary cuts and tax hikes have compounded the difficulties for many people.
 
In April, a retired pharmacist fatally shot himself under a cypress tree in the capital's Syntagma Square, about hundred metres from parliament, saying government austerity measures had wiped out his pension and left him in penury.