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Madrid bomb injures 14

2001-05-12 20:47

William Schomberg

Madrid - A car bomb blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA exploded in central Madrid early on Saturday, injuring 14 people just one day before bitterly contested elections in Spain's northern Basque region.

An anonymous caller in the name of ETA warned authorities eight minutes before the blast, Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy said.

The bomb went off in one of the Spanish capital's busiest roads, Goya Street. "It could have been a massacre," Rajoy told reporters at the scene. Local media reported the car contained around 30kg of explosive.

A bank security guard was the only one seriously hurt, though his wounds were not life-threatening, and all other injuries were minor, emergency services officials said.

The explosion demolished the facade of a nearby bank, shattered windows throughout the area and left the twisted remains of the car littering the street.

"The buildings shook, I thought they were going to fall down," said a man who was nearby at the time of the explosion.

The bomb went off virtually on the stroke of midnight as campaigning for the Basque parliamentary ballot officially ended and a "Day of Reflection" - free of electioneering and opinion polls - was getting under way.

"Doubtless the terrorists aimed to make clear their disdain for the rules of the democratic game and their aim to keep on killing, whatever the (Sunday election) results are," said an editorial in centre-right newspaper El Mundo.

Elections overshadowed by ETA

The elections have been overshadowed by ETA's campaign of bloodshed. The group has claimed 29 killings since ending a ceasefire in December 1999 and was blamed for the fatal shooting last Sunday of a senator from Spain's ruling Popular Party (PP).

ETA did not claim responsibility for the latest bombing - it usually waits weeks to do so. But politicians across the spectrum immediately blamed the group, the last major guerrilla organisation still active in continental western Europe.

Officials believe the latest attack was intended not only to intimidate Basque voters but also to press ETA's strategy of creating a climate of fear throughout Spain.

The bomb went off outside a branch office of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, one of Spain's biggest banks which is based in the Basque region.

"ETA has its own particular method of campaigning which is intolerable and inadmissable," head of nationalist party Eusko Alkartasuna Gorka Knorr told local Basque radio.

Close race

ETA has been blamed for about 800 deaths since 1968, when it launched its violent campaign for an independent state in the Basque-speaking areas of northern Spain and southwestern France.

Candidates standing in Sunday's elections are deeply divided on how to tackle ETA.

Mainstream nationalists, who favour moves towards independence but oppose ETA's violence, propose dialogue. The Madrid-based parties refuse to consider any concessions and accuse the nationalists of cosying up to ETA's political allies.

Polls have shown the nationalist and non-nationalist camps virtually neck-and-neck but no party winning an outright majority in the Basque parliament. Attention has turned to the possible post-election alliances.

The dominant Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) looks set to win the most votes again but could lose control of the highly autonomous region for the first time since Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s.

Aznar's conservative PP party has gained the most ground since the last elections in 1998 and has called on the opposition Socialists - the PP's enemy in national politics - to form an non-nationalist alliance to oust the PNV.

(additional reporting by Kevin Fylan in Madrid and Dan Trotta in Bilbao)

- Reuters

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