The appealing water and tough hills of Crete, Greece. Photo / 123RF
Bullets fired from a Kalashnikov assault rifle have created small craters in the asphalt.
Another round has gouged a hole in a metal railing. There are dark bloodstains on the ground.
It may sound like a scene from some war-torn town on the front line of Ukraine. But
The sun-baked island in the Mediterranean revealed its dark side last week when a decades-long blood feud between two rival families in the tiny mountain village of Vorizia erupted into violence.
Male villagers armed with automatic weapons, hunting rifles and shotguns went on a rampage in a fierce gun battle that left two people dead and at least six injured.
Residents say it is a miracle that the death toll was not higher, given that hundreds of rounds were reportedly fired.
Investigators from Greece’s directorate for combating organised crime are trying to understand what caused the clash and reconstruct exactly what happened, with both families insisting that they were attacked first.
The firefight was the culmination of a long-running feud between the Kargakis and Fragiadakis clans. They dominate the village, which crouches at the foot of Mount Psiloritis where, according to legend, the god Zeus was raised.
At first glance, it epitomises a picturesque Greek rural settlement. Sheep are penned inside stonewalled fields, olive trees blanket the hillsides and far above the ochre-red cliffs that loom over the village, eagles and vultures wheel in the autumn mist.
That peace and quiet was shattered a week ago, however.
A man clad in black reportedly shot at members of the Fragiadakis family with an AK-47 from a shaded terrace that overlooks the village.
Meanwhile, 39-year-old Fanouris Kargakis, another member of the Kargakis clan, was hurtling along the main street of the village in a car, armed with a pistol and an automatic rifle.
Leaning out of the vehicle’s window, he fired off several rounds. He allegedly shot and killed 56-year-old Evangelia Fragiadakis.
He also allegedly shot and wounded Georgia Fragiadakis, one of her sisters, who took a bullet in the arm.
“Fanouris shot me. I saw him clearly, despite all the chaos. He took his gun out and he was aiming for my son or nephew but instead he shot me and my sister,” she told the Telegraph in the shade of a village alleyway, her injured arm in a sling and still causing her great pain.
Moments later, Fanouris Kargakis was himself shot dead, his body riddled with at least four bullets.
It is not yet clear who killed him, but it may well have been the unidentified Kalashnikov shooter high on the terrace above the village.
The murdered man was a father-of-five – his eldest child is 10 while his youngest is 5 months. He was buried last week in the village cemetery.
A framed photograph sits on his grave, along with a couple of packets of cigarettes, a lighter and a plastic cup of coffee – afterlife offerings left by his grieving relatives.
So far, seven men have been arrested across both sides of the divide, including one who has been charged with the murder of Evangelia Fragiadakis.
Police raided a prison in Crete, where relatives of Fanouris Kargakis are being held for unrelated crimes. Officers confiscated two mobile phones that they thought might have been used to give orders for a bomb attack on a house bought by a Fragiadakis on Kargakis territory.
What is remarkable about the blood feud between the two families, apart from the wanton use of firearms, is the tiny arena in which it is being conducted.
The heads of the families live in flat-roofed houses in the heart of the village that are just a few metres from each other.
Clan members pass each other in the street every day – often taking the chance to spit out some dark insult or threat.
All of this is happening in a village that can be crossed on foot in 10 minutes.
The vendetta has revealed a side of Crete that is invisible to the vast majority of tourists who spend their holidays in the island’s resorts.
It remains integral to its identity – a fiery, anti-authoritarian streak, a deep distrust of the state, and a generous dash of machismo.
Even among Greeks, Cretans are renowned for their pugnaciousness, a quality that they earned over the centuries as they resisted rule by the Venetians, then the Ottomans, and then the Nazis.
In the latter struggle, doughty Cretan resistance fighters with soup-strainer moustaches, baggy trousers and daggers in their belts teamed up with ancient Greek-reciting British Army officers in what turned out to be a formidable martial match.
For months on end they lived in mountain caves, gathering intelligence, attacking German garrisons and helping escaped Allied prisoners escape to Egypt.
“The warlike habit of these centuries … bequeathed, in the wilder regions, certain lawless customs which, formerly aimed at the oppressor, now wreak havoc among the Cretans themselves,” wrote Patrick Leigh Fermor, the swashbuckling British Army officer who played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during World War II.
“Blood feuds can decimate opposing families over a space of decades and seal up neighbouring villages in hostile deadlock.”
He wrote that in the 1950s – but events this week show that they still appear to hold true.
Such feuds can have devastating consequences for communities in Crete.
A clash that broke out in the 1940s in the remote village of Aradena, which overlooks a deep gorge in western Crete, eventually led to the entire village being abandoned.
It started with a trivial dispute between two boys over a goat’s bell but escalated into a deadly conflict between two families. Aradena remains a ghost village to this day.
“There are places like this all over the island – half the village are in the cemetery or have had to leave,” said a woman who asked not to be named.
The confrontation between the two clans in Vorizia dates back at least 30 years and involves disagreements over land and livestock.
The immediate trigger for this latest round of violence, however, was the purchase of a house on the lip of a cliff overlooking the village.
It lies in what the Kargakis family consider to be their territory.
It was recently bought, however, by a Fragiadakis. He was about to move in with his family – until a massive bomb was detonated outside the property.
The black blast marks are clearly visible at the front entrance. The interior has been wrecked and is a mess of twisted metal, chunks of masonry and glass shards.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bomb, but the Fragiadakis clan are convinced it was the work of the Kargakis. The next day, the shooting started.
The bombing and the shootings have deepened the raw animosity in the village, which lies 50km south of Heraklion, Crete’s biggest city.
“For the past 30 years, the Kargakis family have asked more and more of us, and we have always tried to make concessions. But we can no longer accept their demands,” said Yiannis Fragiadakis, the brother of the woman who was shot dead.
“The others were the first to open fire. They will pay for it. My sister was not armed. The courts will prosecute them and justice will be served. We want to end this conflict.
“But I don’t know if we can trust the other family. They are still threatening us and telling us to leave the village forever.”
On the other side of the divide, the Kargakis are equally scathing of the Fragiadakis clan.
“They harass us in the street, they bully our kids at school. They are junkies and alcoholics. When we pass them in the village, they whisper insults and threats,” said Maria Kargakis, the sister of Fanouris.
She spoke from the terrace from where the Kalashnikov wielding gunman was suspected of firing the bullets that killed her brother.
“They don’t give a s***. They told me I am a whore, that they will hang me from the roof of my house. Last year they stabbed my son. I think there will be more violence,” said Ms Kargakis, 43, who has six children and five grandchildren.
In Crete, blood feuds are often resolved by independent mediators in a process known by the Greek word “sasmos”, which loosely translates as to “compromise” or “reconciliation”.
In Vorizia, there have been seven attempts at mediation. All have failed.
“These families are failing to raise their kids properly, to raise them without hatred,” said Agapi Charalambaki, 75, a resident who was born in the village and considered herself to be neutral in the confrontation.
“Both families have so many kids – it’s important to teach them how to behave.”
Since the bombing and the gun battle, the Greek authorities have flooded the village with officers from the elite EKAM special forces police unit.
They have searched caves and shepherds’ huts as they hunt for the weapons that were used in the battle. Locating the firearms and matching them to the spent rounds will be crucial in establishing who pulled the trigger.
Crete’s entrenched gun culture needs to be tackled if such vendettas are to be stamped out, said Panos Sobolos, an expert on the island’s blood feuds.
“If you have a gun in your house, you will use it – even for the most stupid reason,” he said. “It is about education and mentality. And it has to change.”
On Crete, there are estimated to be between 600,000 and a million firearms in private hands, some of them from the World War II – an extraordinary number given that the population is less than 700,000.
Aris Tsantiropoulos, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Crete and the author of The Vendetta in Modern Mountainous Central Crete, says the gun battle in Vorizia does not strictly count as a blood feud.
In traditional vendettas in Crete, “victims are carefully selected”, whereas in Vorizia there was indiscriminate firing by gunmen wielding assault rifles, and a woman was killed – something that is normally considered taboo.
The violence that erupted in the village is “completely incompatible with the logic of vendetta”, he said.
A government minister visited Heraklion on Friday and pledged to introduce stricter rules governing the use of firearms, including a ban on people firing them into the air during weddings and village festivals.
There will be tougher penalties for the illegal possession of firearms, said Michalis Chrysochoidis, the Minister for Public Order.
“They will not run the show in Crete, the tough guys and the local mafias. We will not allow the area to be tarnished by criminal behaviour,” he said.
But the pledge of a crackdown is met with scepticism by many of the inhabitants of Vorizia. They fear that the bloody events of this week will only lead to further retaliation and reprisals.
“As soon as the police leave, someone from the Kargakis family will throw a bomb into our house and kill us all,” said Georgia Fragiadakis, sitting outside her home and nursing her wounded arm.
“Our lives are destroyed. We want this war to end – but I don’t think it will.”
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