And another heralding WWIII, This time form the NY Daily News. This one is also a must read and fairly short, so I will post it here.
World War III strikes Spain NY Daily News ^ | March 12 2004
Posted on 03/12/2004 2:58:56 PM PST by knighthawk
Whether the train blasts in Madrid were the work of Basque separatists, as Spanish officials first reflexively alleged, or of regrouped and reenergized Al Qaeda malevolents, which would be truly terrifying news, hardly makes a difference to the innocent legions of dead and maimed. But it is of enormous consequence to those of us left living in daily fear. The Basques' grievance is with Spain alone; they're unlikely to strike elsewhere. But if this horror is indeed the work of Al Qaeda, the world has just plunged again into nightmare.
Is there now even moderate confidence that anywhere can be assured safety from terrorism, the most monstrous evil of modern times? Not Berlin, where authorities have been tipped to some act of public mayhem set to occur perhaps as early as tonight. Not Paris, where terror alerts have been raised and where soldiers are today deployed in the streets. Not Vienna, where the world's counterterrorism experts have assembled to address the darkening shadows of global menace. And surely not the United States of America.
Yesterday's brutishly boastful letter purporting to be from Osama Bin Laden's Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades not only proudly claimed responsibility for the Madrid havoc but warned that the U.S. very soon will suffer another devastating attack on its soil. "Winds of Black Death," these chop-licking lunatics have titled the glorious destruction to come. The plan, they chortle, is already 90% in place.
That letter is unauthenticated at this hour. Nonetheless, the world is manifestly at war. This must be recognized, without further equivocation. The enemy is an army of Islamic zombies utterly dedicated to the demolition and eradication of Western civilization and Western values. Western militaries and Western intelligence services must band together to stop them, by any methods available. This is the world in which we live today. It is not a world for the faint-hearted and mush-headed.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=14047194_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-MASSACRE-OF-MADRID--BABY-GIRL---VICTIM199-name_page.html MASSACRE OF MADRID: BABY GIRL ..VICTIM199 Mar 13 2004
Grim task of identifying bodies as train death toll rises
By Graham Brough In Madrid And Mark Ellis In London
THE death toll from the Madrid blasts reached 199 after the youngest victim died last night.
A seven-month-old girl called Patricia survived for around 30 hours following the explosions.
She had been found on the floor at Atocha station covered in bloody remains and clothes. Doctors who rescued her said she had most likely been trampled by stampeding survivors as well as hurt in the blast.
Distraught hospital officials said the baby's mother was one of the critically wounded. Her father was missing feared dead.
The baby's aunt, called Katya, said hours before she died: "I have got my sister in one hospital seriously ill, my brother-in-law is most likely dead and their baby is in a terrible state."
The horror of the attacks were last night heard in a taped phone call from a young woman to her mother seconds after the train on which she was travelling was hit by a blast.
As the terrified, high-pitched voice related the horror, two other bombs were heard ripping through the wreckage and the call was cut short.
It was recorded on the mother's answer machine. There was no indication whether the girl survived.
Dozens of victims still in hospital are in a critical condition, many with missing limbs.
Spanish Health minister Ana Pastor said there were still 406 people in wards all over Madrid, of which 38 were critical.
She added: "We are hoping and praying none of the critical become part of the death statistics."
Of the dead, the bodies of 80 were too mutilated to be identified.
The number of children robbed of a parent is estimated at between 200 and 300.
One boy was just 50 yards away from one of the bombs in which his mum and dad died as he ate breakfast at school.
Modesto Pardo, head of the Ciudad de Valencia school, said six other parents of children there had died.
Two more unborn babies and their mothers were still seriously ill in the Gregorio Mananon hospital. One mother is just six weeks into her pregnancy, the other 20 weeks.
More than 125 of the dead had been identified by yesterday.
One counsellor at a hospital said: "The people whose relatives haven't been identified yet...keep on hoping. It's very hard to insist that they shouldn't hang on to that.
"There are a lot of foreigners and it's harder for them to understand. It's a struggle that's got nothing to do with them."
Hundreds of crying, wailing relatives arrived to identify the charred remains of loved ones at the IFEMA festival hall in western Madrid. Some collapsed on the floor in tears.
Psychologist Manuel Desviat, one of a team of doctors trying to console the grief-stricken, said: "They go to pieces on the floor with grief.
"We try to persuade them not to look at the bodies if they are in too bad a state of injury."
One mother said of her daughter who was killed: "She had no right to die. She was 25 and had been married just three months."
Volunteer taxi drivers ferried many relatives of the dead to and from the hall for free.
Hotels supplied blankets, sheets and rooms. At Atocha station, a normally bustling building, mourners sobbed, lit candles and left flowers as a steady procession of silent people came to pay their respects to the dead.
On the tracks, passengers fell silent as their train rumbled past the burned and twisted carriages that were blown up in Thursday's atrocities.
Tearful commuter Isabel Galan, 32, said: "I saw the trains and burst into tears. I felt so helpless, such anger." Another passenger, Isabel Pinto, told how she "saw people escaping from the train asking: 'Have I got eyes?' 'Have I got a face?'"
She added: "They were like zombies."
Black ribbons were stuck to cab window of trains by their drivers.
The two wrecked trains at Atocha remained on tracks just outside the station. Bloodstains on the tracks and bloodied clothing still lay scattered on the ground.
Emergency workers sifted through the wreckage near a banner reading "death will not silence our voice".
Silent locals, many weeping and pale, brought candles and flowers to place by the wreckage.
Forensic experts had worked through the night to trace victims and search for clues as to who was behind the blasts. Officials were last night divided over whether ETA or al-Qaeda was responsible.
Those claiming Islamic terrorists caused the blasts point to the email sent to London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds.
The message, said to be from Osama bin Laden's terror outfit and issued by the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, said its "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusader alliance".
It added: "This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam."
Spanish police also discovered a van on the outskirts of the city with detonators and an Arabic language tape with verses from the Koran. Spain has been regarded as a potential target for Islamic terrorists because of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's support for Britain and America in the war against Iraq.
But Interior Minister Angel Acebes insisted the attack bore all the hallmarks of an ETA strike and that the Arabic tape may have been intended to confuse matters. He said the types of explosives used, recent threats to bomb Madrid's trains and the fact that an identical plan was prevented on Christmas Eve, pointed to the Basque terror group.
And United Nations counter terrorism chief Inocencio Arias added: "It has all the fingerprints of ETA."
Unbelievable this comes from ultra leftist New York Daily News.