62 People Killed in Madrid Explosions
By STEPHEN MACKEY, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - Powerful explosions rocked three Madrid train stations Thursday just days before Spain’s general elections, killing at least 62 rush-hour commuters and wounding hundreds more in what officials called the deadliest attack ever by the Basque separatist group ETA.
“This is a massacre,” government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana said.
At least two bombs exploded around 7:30 a.m. local time in a commuter train arriving at Atocha station, a bustling hub for subway, commuter and long-distance trains in Spain’s capital. Blasts rocked two other stops on a commuter line leading to Atocha.
People in tears streamed away from Atocha station as rescue workers carried bodies covered in sheets of gold fabric. People with bloodied faces sat on curbs, using cellphones to tell loved ones they were alive. Hospitals appealed for blood donations.
Shards of twisted metal were scattered by rails in the Atocha station at the spot where an explosion severed a train in two.
“There were people destroyed, blown up, without legs,” said emergency worker Oscar Romero.
“There were two cars in pieces with bodies underneath,” he said. “We had to pick up bits of people and put them on stretchers. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in this job.”
At all three stations, it was not immediately clear if the bombs went off on trains, platforms or both.
A total of at least 62 people were killed, Interior Ministry spokesman Richard Ibanez said. Reports said hundreds more were injured and the death toll was expected to rise.
There was no claim of responsibility, but officials blamed ETA. The toll would make Thursday the deadliest day ever in decades of attacks by ETA. Until now, it was 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.
ETA often phones in warnings before detonating bombs, but this time it apparently did not. The bombs went off at the peak of the morning rush hour.
“I saw many things explode in the air, I don’t know, 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.
The government convened anti-ETA rallies nationwide for Friday evening.
“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 very principle of European democracy.”
Straw said that Britain stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Spain that the government 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 at hushed legislature in Strasbourg, France. “It is an outrageous unjustified and unjustifiable attack on the Spanish people and Spanish democracy.”
Police had been on high alert for Basque separatist violence ahead of general elections Sunday, in which regional tensions and how to fight ETA have been key themes. The ruling party candidate for prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, said he was calling off the rest of his campaign.
On Feb. 29, police intercepted a Madrid-bound van packed with more than 1,100 pounds of explosives, and blamed ETA. On Christmas eve, police thwarted an attempted bombing at Chamartin, another Madrid rail station, and arrested two suspected ETA members.
A woman who lives near the El Pozo station on the line leading to Atocha said “the scene I am seeing is hellish. People running toward Atocha however they can.” The woman said she saw a boy or young man on the ground who appeared to have died.
Until Thursday, ETA had been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its decades-old campaign to carve an independent Basque homeland out of territory straddling northern Spain and southwest France.
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