By MAR ROMAN, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - Ten terrorist bombs blasted three Madrid train stations at the height of the morning rush hour Thursday, killing more than 170 people and wounding at least 600 before this weekend's general elections. Officials blamed Basque separatists for the worst terror attack in Spanish history.
"This is a massacre," government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana said.
A total of 10 bombs exploded, killing 173 people and injured more than 600, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. Police found and detonated three others.
Before the Thursday bombings, the Basque separatist group ETA had been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its decades-old campaign to carve an independent Basque homeland from territory straddling northern Spain and southwest France.
"ETA had been looking for a massacre in Spain," Acebes said after an emergency cabinet meeting, citing recent thwarted attacks. "Unfortunately, today it achieved its goal."
He said security services knew ETA was responsible because the group tried a similar attack on Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a station that was not hit Thursday. He also noted the Feb. 29 police interception of a Madrid-bound van packed with more than 1,100 pounds of explosives. Authorities blamed ETA.
"Therefore, it is absolutely clear and evident that the terrorist organization ETA was looking to commit a major attack," Acebes said. "The only thing that varies is the train station that was targeted."
A top Basque politician, Arnold Otegi, denied the separatists were behind the blasts and blamed "Arab resistance." Many al-Qaida-linked terrorists were captured in Spain or were believed to have operated from there.
Thursday's bombs exploded about 7:30 a.m. on trains or at platforms on the commuter line running to the Atocha station, a bustling transportation hub in the capital. At least two of the bombs went off in trains that were in the Atocha station.
Otegi told Radio Popular in San Sebastian that ETA always phones in warnings before it attacks. Acebes said there was no warning before Thursday's attack.
"The modus operandi, the high number of victims and the way it was carried out make me think, and I have a hypothesis in mind, that yes it may have been an operative cell from the Arab resistance," Otegi said, noting that Spain's government backed the Iraq war.
Until now, the highest death toll in ETA-linked attacks was 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.
People streamed away from the Atocha station in tears Thursday as rescue workers carried bodies covered in sheets of gold fabric. The wounded, faces bloodied, sat on curbs and used mobile phones to tell loved ones they were alive. Hospitals appealed for blood donations. Buses were pressed into service as ambulances.
Rescue workers were overwhelmed, said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance driver who went to Santa Eugenia station, about six miles southeast of Atocha station.
"There was one carriage totally blown apart. People were scattered all over the platforms. I saw legs and arms. I won't forget this ever. I've seen horror," Sanchez said.
Shards of twisted metal were scattered by rails in the Atocha station at the spot where an explosion severed a train in two.
"I saw many things explode in the air ... it was horrible," said Juani Fernandez, 50, a civil servant who was on the platform waiting to go to work.
"People started to scream and run, some bumping into each other and as we ran there was another explosion. I saw people with blood pouring from them, people on the ground," Fernandez said.
"Those responsible for this tragedy will be arrested and they will pay very dearly for it," Acebes said at Atocha station.
The attacks traumatized Spain on the eve of Sunday's general election.
The campaign was largely dominated by separatist tensions in regions like the Basque country, with both the ruling conservative Popular Party and the opposition Socialists ruling out talks with ETA.
The government convened anti-ETA rallies nationwide for Friday evening and announced three days of mourning.
"What a horror," said the Basque regional president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, who insisted ETA does not represent the Basque people. "When ETA attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces," he said in the Basque capital Vitoria.
"This is one of those days that you don't want to live through," said opposition Socialist party spokesman Jesus Caldera. "ETA must be defeated," referring to the group as "those terrorists, those animals."
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the attacks terrorist atrocities and a "disgusting assault on the very principle of European democracy."
Straw said that Britain stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Spain and was ready to send any kind of material help needed.
Elsewhere, European Parliament President Pat Cox said the bomb attacks amounted to "a declaration of war on democracy."
"No more bombs, no more dead," Cox said in Spanish before a hushed legislature in Strasbourg, France. "It is an outrageous, unjustified and unjustifiable attack on the Spanish people and Spanish democracy."
Spanish officials had said ETA was against the ropes following the arrest last year of more than 150 members or collaborators in Spain and France, including the leaders of ETA's commando network. Last year, ETA killed three people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.