THESSALONIKI, Greece: A group of villagers trashed a police station in northeastern Greece early yesterday after two suspects were arrested for attacking a Canadian gold mining site, officials said. “A group burst in and wrecked the police station” in Ierissos village, Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said on Skai radio.

Residents claim police used force when arresting the two suspects in the February attack on the work site of Hellenic Gold, a subsidiary of Canadian firm Eldorado Gold, a police source told AFP. Several hundred opponents of the project later protested outside a tribunal in the neighbouring town of Polygyros, shouting anti-police slogans and demanding the release of the suspects.

“Riot police and security officers are the real hooligans,” the crowd chanted. The arrests occurred around 3:00 a.m. (2400 GMT). An unidentified group of angry villagers then marched to the unstaffed police station, breaking doors and windows as well as setting a fire that damaged furniture, documents, computers and other items, the police source said.

Dendias told Skai that police made the arrests before dawn in order to avoid trouble after violent clashes erupted during a previous police operation in March over the Hellenic Gold attack that left a guard injured and equipment damaged.

He said the protesters saw themselves as real-life versions of the feisty Gauls that take on the Roman Empire in the Asterix comic books.

“We are facing opposition from a section of the local community that wants to impose its own law and operate like a Gaulish village, it’s not possible,” Dendias told the station.