Three men believed to be responsible for the Madrid train bombings blew themselves up inside an apartment house here on Saturday night as the police prepared to assault the building, officials said. The blast also killed one officer and wounded at least 11 others.
| I'm glad the Islamists are dead. It's too bad that good guys were injured and killed in the process. |
The acting interior minister, Ãngel Acebes, said the men, on spotting police special agents, shouted in Arabic and fired shots through the window of the building in Leganés, a working-class district of Madrid where many immigrants live. The police, who began the raid at about 6 p.m., according to news reports, evacuated the building the men were in and surrounding apartment buildings. When the police moved to storm the building, around 9 p.m., according to news reports, "the terrorists set off a powerful explosion, blowing themselves up," Mr. Acebes said. The blast gutted the lower floor and tore off the roof of the building, Mr. Acebes said. Among the dead, he said, were "some of the presumed authors" of the March 11 railway blasts that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,400.
| That's probably just as well, though it would have been nice to get information out of them. But if that happened, they wouldn't end up dead, just jugged for a few years. |
On Thursday, a Spanish High Court judge, Juan del Olmo, issued six European arrest warrants in the case: five for Moroccan men and one for a Tunisian man, Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, whom he called the "leader and coordinator" of the train attacks. Mr. Acebes refused to say whether the authorities believed that Mr. Abdelmajid had been one of the men in the apartment house.
| I heard on Fox News this morning that he was... |
He also said it was "too early to tell" whether there had been more than three men in the house and whether anyone had escaped before the explosion. Asked whether the raid was prompted by suspicions that the men were planning to plant a bomb in the future, Mr. Acebes did not answer directly, saying, "We came to the apartment as a consequence of the police investigation under way since the attacks."
| Doesn't really matter, if they'd already planted a bomb in the past, does it? Or do we not worry about people who're already dead? |
The authorities involved in the investigation, he added, were "working very intensely, meticulously and professionally and making great advances." He called the performance of the officers in the raid "brilliant," and he expressed sympathy for the family of the killed officer, a 41-year-old man who had a wife and two children. Many details of the police operation on Saturday remained unclear, including how many agents had been involved and why, after three weeks of quiet arrests and questioning, the authorities had decided to change tactics with a full-blown assault.
| Maybe because they had their targets located and they didn't want them to blow anything else up? |
The Spanish news media have widely reported that a man previously linked to a Qaeda cell in Spain, Jamal Zougam, was believed to be the mastermind of the train bombings. But the arrest warrants this week singled out Mr. Abdelmajid, describing him as a "catalyzing agent" who "raised awareness of jihad" among his circle. He "had manifested specifically since 2003 that he was preparing a violent act in Spain, specifically in the Madrid area," the warrant said. Spanish news media have said Mr. Abdelmajid was a resident of Madrid who worked as a real estate agent and lived in a middle-class neighborhood. |