The Paphos District Court has ordered a 35-year-old man held in custody for eight days over a serious attack on food delivery drivers in Mouttalos, Paphos, on Tuesday night.
The man was arrested last night, shortly before midnight, police said, and investigations are continuing as officers search for others believed to have taken part in the attack.
A police spokesperson said a second person has been identified, with an arrest warrant issued and the suspect being sought.
The attack began at around 8:40pm on Tuesday, when a 26-year-old delivery driver arrived in Mouttalos to deliver a food order. According to evidence under examination, an unidentified man, reportedly accompanied by three others, refused to pay for the order and threw a stone at the driver.
The 26-year-old alerted colleagues, who rushed to the scene. About ten unidentified men, some of them reportedly carrying metal objects, gathered in the area shortly afterwards and attacked the delivery drivers, damaging their motorcycles and knocking some of them to the ground.
Police said the situation escalated when four of the unidentified men got into a vehicle and drove to Mouttalos, where they found a 22-year-old delivery driver who had just completed a delivery.
Three of the men got out of the vehicle and attacked the 22-year-old, before taking a sum of money and his mobile phone and fleeing in an unknown direction, police said.
Five delivery drivers were injured in total. All were taken by ambulance to Paphos General Hospital, where examinations found they had sustained various injuries. Four were discharged, while one remained in hospital for further treatment.
Police are investigating the incident as robbery, assault causing actual bodily harm, riotous behaviour, illegal possession and carrying of an offensive weapon, common assault and malicious damage.
Part of a wider pattern of attacks on delivery workers
Tuesday’s attack comes after a series of assaults on food delivery workers, several with a racist dimension, mainly concentrated in Limassol.
In 2024, the government introduced a registration system for delivery workers along with access to the 112 emergency number, intended to speed up police response, and increased patrols in high-risk areas. Then-Labour Minister Yiannis Panayiotou said all workers had the right to feel safe, pointing to a newly agreed collective agreement for the sector as a step towards better regulation of delivery workers’ employment conditions.
Investigations to identify the remaining people involved and establish the full circumstances of the incident are continuing.
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