Technical failure hits Greek police emergency number 100

The news in Greek

1. έκτακτος
   που συμβαίνει ξαφνικά και απρογραμμάτιστα, συνήθως σε δύσκολη ή επικίνδυνη κατάσταση ↩︎
2. ανάγκη  (f.)
   κατάσταση όπου κάποιος χρειάζεται κάτι πολύ έντονα ή βρίσκεται σε δύσκολη κατάσταση ↩︎
3. τεχνικός
   που έχει σχέση με την τεχνολογία, τα μηχανήματα ή τον τρόπο που κάτι λειτουργεί ↩︎
4. πρόβλημα  (n.)
   δύσκολη ή ανεπιθύμητη κατάσταση που χρειάζεται λύση ↩︎
5. πολίτης  (m.)
   άτομο που ανήκει σε ένα κράτος, ζει και έχει δικαιώματα και υποχρεώσεις σε αυτό ↩︎
6. χρησιμοποιώ
   κάνω χρήση ενός αντικειμένου, μέσου ή υπηρεσίας για να πετύχω κάτι ↩︎

Translation

Text comprehension

Question 1: Why could people not reach the police by calling 100 on January 30, 2026, in Attica?

Question 2: Which other emergency number did the police tell people to use while 100 was not working?

Vocabulary

Greek	English
έκτακτος	emergency / extraordinary
ανάγκη  (f.)	need / emergency
τεχνικός	technical
πρόβλημα  (n.)	problem
πολίτης  (m.)	citizen
χρησιμοποιώ	use

Read the full story

The Greek police emergency phone line 100 was briefly out of service on the evening of Friday, 30 January 2026, due to a technical malfunction at the call centre of the Immediate Action service in Attica, the wider region that includes Athens.

According to several Greek news outlets, people who tried to call 100 for urgent help heard a recorded message saying that the connection was temporarily unavailable because of a technical problem. This situation reportedly lasted for about 20 minutes before the line was restored.

The Hellenic Police (ΕΛ.ΑΣ.) issued an official announcement explaining that the fault was located in the telephone centre of Immediate Action Attica, which handles emergency calls to 100. Until the problem was fixed, citizens were instructed to use the European emergency number 112 for any urgent incident.

In its statement, the police stressed that for any kind of emergency—such as accidents, crimes in progress or other serious situations—callers should dial 112 instead of 100 while the service was down. Media reports note that readers had already contacted news websites to complain that 100 was not working, prompting additional attention to the issue.

A later update from the Hellenic Police confirmed that the technical problem was resolved at 20:13 local time, and the 100 emergency line returned to normal operation. No detailed information was provided in the reports about the exact cause of the failure or about any specific incidents that might have been affected during the outage.

The event highlights the role of 112 as the unified European emergency number, which people in Greece and other EU countries can call when national lines such as 100 (police), 166 (ambulance) or 199 (fire brigade) are unavailable or when they are unsure which service they need.

Info: ‘Greek Learner News’ is a service from ‘Let’s Learn Greek’, a language school dedicated to teaching Greek, where we offer various types of Greek lessons online for learners at different levels.