At least four explosive devices detonated Monday around Spain after telephone warnings from callers claiming to speak on behalf of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, news report said. Explosions were reported in Leon and Santillana del Mar in the north, and Avila and Ciudad Real in central Spain, the news agency Europa Press reported. There was no immediate word on injuries or damage.
UPDATE:
ETA has bombed seven cities in attacks timed to coincide with a national holiday marking the anniversary of the signing of Spain's modern democratic constitution. The bombs went off shortly after two anonymous callers claiming to speak for the terrorist group told a Basque newspaper the names of the cities that had been targeted. The Spanish Interior Ministry said three people including two police officers were injured in the central city of Ciudad Real and two more in northern Santillana del Mar. Blasts were reported shortly after 1.30pm on Monday in the northern cities of Leon, Santillana del Mar, Valladolid and Avila, and in Ciudad Real, Alicante and Malaga in the south. A woman and a girl suffered light injuries in the blast in Santillana del Mar, in northern Spain. No other injuries have so far been reported. Police had enough time to try to evacuate the areas in which they believed the bombs had been placed. But in at least three cases, a false location had been given by the anonymous caller.
In Leon a bomb went off, causing light damage, in a cafeteria in a central square that had been evacuated after it was identified by the first caller, said local police. Valladolid's central square, which was full of tourists, was also evacuated and sealed off. A low-intensity bomb went off in a cafeteria there that was closed, police said. In Santillana del Mar, a bomb went off in the parking lot of a zoo, police said. All the attacks were timed to show ETA's opposition to the Spanish state as they went off on Spain's Day of the Constitution, which marks the 26th anniversary of the signing of the democratic constitution in 1978.
The latest attacks on Monday follow five bomb blasts at petrol service stations in Madrid on Friday in which seven people suffered minor injuries. The attacks caused major disruption to traffic on the eve of a holiday weekend, in what authorities said was likely the work of Basque separatist group ETA. Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, in a live address to the nation on Spanish television, said "everything points to ETA" in the first attacks to hit the Spanish capital since the 11 March train bombings earlier this year, which killed 191 and injured nearly 2,000. The low-intensity blasts went off at nearly the same time in the early evening shortly after a caller to the Basque newspaper Gara, claiming to represent the militant separatist group, warned the attacks were imminent. |