After four days of riots, fire and teargas, calm has finally returned to Athens. According to a police spokesman, the situation in the capital was mostly calm on Tuesday, following police deployment of more than 15,000 officers and dozens of arrests.

Police are readying themselves however for a new wave of unrest on Wednesday, as rallies of labour unions are planned then, during a nationwide general strike against the government’s economic policies.

Meanwhile groups of youths are still barricaded in a university where police has no access due to a tradition of university asylum.

Tuesday also saw the police attacked by protesters while guarding the Greek parliament, and elsewhere thousands attended the teenager killed by police, Alexandros Grigoropoulos’ funeral was for the most part calm. The Athenian municipal cemetery of Palio Faliro where it was held had some groups shouting anti-police slogans, but the situation calmed down after the family requested that respect be shown for their dead son.

Greek president Karolos Papoulias also appealed for calm, asking Greeks to honor Alex’s memory peacefully.

The two officers involved in the shooting have been charged, with premeditated manslaughter and the illegal use of a firearm and complicity to the former, respectively. They will appear before court on Wednesday and have been meanwhile suspended, along with the Exarchia precinct police chief.

Events unfolded similarly in other large Greek cities, while George Papandreou, the Socialist opposition leader, demanded that the government resign and hold early elections to help end violence.

Papandreou addressed his parliamentary group on Tuesday. "We claim power. The only thing this government can offer is to resign and turn to the people for its verdict," he said.

The manifestations are the worst unrest the country has seen in a quarter of a century, and its Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has vowed to put an end to it. A government spokesman has denied plans to declare martial law.