At Least 190 Dead in Madrid Terror Blast
By MAR ROMAN, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - Ten bombs tore through trains and stations along a commuter line at the height of the morning rush hour Thursday, killing more than 190 people and wounding 1,200 others in the deadliest terror attack in Spanish history.
Spain initially blamed Basque separatists for the bombings, but the interior minister also said other lines of investigation were opened after police found a van Thursday with detonators and an audiotape of Quranic verses near where the bombed trains originated.
The Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi said it had received a claim of responsibility issued in the name of al-Qaida.
The e-mail claim of responsibility, signed by the shadowy Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, was received at the newspaper's London offices and said the brigade's "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain."
"This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam," the claim said.
Asked about the claim of responsibility, White House spokesman Sean McCormack said "we've seen the news reports and we're going to determine what the facts are."
Spain backed the U.S.-led war on Iraq despite domestic opposition, and many al-Qaida-linked terrorists have been captured in Spain or were believed to have operated from there.
After an emergency Cabinet meeting, a somber Prime minister Jose Maria Aznar vowed to hunt down the attackers.
"This is mass murder," he said.
The bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite also found in a bomb-laden van intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid, a source at Aznar's office said on condition of anonymity. Officials blamed the ETA separatist group at that time.
Police found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape with Quranic verses in the town of Alcala de Henares, 15 miles east of Madrid, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Thursday night.
Police found seven detonators and the tape on the front seat of the van, Acebes told a news conference.
He added that ETA remained the "main line of investigation" in the blasts, Europe's worst terror attack since the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270.
Three of the four trains bombed Thursday originated in Alcala de Henares and one passed through it, the state rail company said.
Panicked commuters abandoned bags and their shoes as they trampled each other to escape the Atocha terminal, where bombs struck two trains. Some fled into darkened, dangerous tunnels at the station, a bustling hub for subway, commuter and long-distance trains just south of Madrid's famed Prado Museum.
The bodies of the dead, some with their cell phones ringing unanswered as frantic relatives tried to contact them, were carried away by rescue workers. The wounded, faces bloodied, sat on curbs as buses were pressed into service as ambulances.
One firefighter said he saw 70 bodies along a platform at El Pozo station, just east of downtown Madrid. One corpse had been blown onto the roof.
Forty coroners worked to identify remains, the national news agency Efe said, and a steady stream of taxis carried relatives to a sprawling convention center where the bodies were taken.
A total of 10 bombs, nearly all in backpacks, exploded in a 15-minute span along nine miles of the commuter line — running from Santa Eugenia to the Madrid hub of Atocha — killing 192 people and injuring more than 1,240, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
Police found and detonated three other bombs.
The blasts began about 7:40 a.m., tearing through trains or platforms on the commuter line running to the Atocha station. At least two of the bombs went off in trains at that station.
ETA has 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. However, its attacks have been on a lesser scale than Thursday's bombings, with the largest toll being 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.
Spanish officials had said ETA was against the ropes after 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.
Spain held peace talks with ETA in the late 1980s and again in 1998 after the group declared a cease-fire that lasted 14 months. But ETA resumed attacks, and Aznar has insisted on crushing it with police measures.
"No negotiation is possible or desirable with these assassins who so many times have sown death all around Spain," Aznar said Thursday.
Acebes said ETA tried a similar attack on Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a Madrid 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."
Otegi told Radio Popular in San Sebastian that ETA always phones in warnings before attacking. Acebes said there was no warning Thursday.
President Bush called Aznar to express solidarity and sympathy, condemning "this vicious attack of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"The United States stands resolutely with Spain in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and against the particular threat that Spain faces from the evil of ETA terrorism," added Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Rescue workers were overwhelmed, said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance driver who went to Santa Eugenia station, about six miles southeast of the 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."
The attack horrified Spain on the eve of Sunday's general election. Campaigning was called off and three days of mourning were declared. Newspapers ran special editions.
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 Socialists had come under withering criticism because a politician linked to them in the Catalonia region admitted meeting with ETA members in France in January.
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."
More than eight in 10 Spaniards said in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken last month that they are worried about the threat of terrorism in their country. That was the highest level of concern about terrorism in five European countries polled — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.