'We won't forget the suffering'
2005-03-11 07:58
Madrid - Spain on Friday began an official day of mourning and nationwide commemorations to mark the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people in the country's worst ever terrorist attack.
The co-ordinated attacks on four early-morning commuter trains produced the worst death toll in Europe since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am jet over Scotland.
The scars and the emotional trauma still run deep with many of the relatives set to boycott official celebrations to mourn the loss of their loved ones in private.
But those living in Madrid had little means of escaping entirely the reminders of the day so many lives were ripped apart after mainly Moroccan Islamic radicals sympathetic to al-Qaeda detonated 10 bombs on the "trains of death."
In a controversial move, the Madrid regional government last week decided to ring the bells of the capital's 650 churches in their memory from daybreak.
Emotional tribute
The number of casualties would have been immeasurably higher had the explosives, packed into rucksacks, gone off seconds later than they did, when two of the trains were due to arrive at a packed central subway interchange.
The blasts went off within three minutes of each other at three stations beginning at 07:37.
The sound of the church bells will be in stark contrast to the eerie silence which blanketed the city in the aftermath of the attack, once rescuers had raced to the scene.
Only the cries of the badly injured and the shrill rings of victims' mobile phones rent the air as relatives alerted to the terrible news frantically tried to get word of them.
On Thursday, Spain's King Juan Carlos paid an emotional tribute to the victims, vowing that their suffering will never be forgotten.
" We will never forget their suffering," he told a Madrid anti-terrorist summit which has coincided with the anniversary.
The king and Queen Sofia will Friday inaugurate a "forest of the absent" in Madrid's Retiro park which will comprise 192 cypress and olive trees to remember the 191 victims and also the policeman who died in a raid on a suspects' flat in April when seven suspects blew themselves up.
Victims of the attacks came from 13 countries - including Morocco, whose nationals make up the bulk of the suspects.
Many of those who survived are still struggling with the physical and psychological consequences, and there remains much rancour among survivors and families of victims, who were disgusted that party politicking dominated the months-long investigation into the blasts.
At 20:00 a funeral mass will be held at Madrid's Almudena Cathedral.
Spain has lived in the shadow of violence since before the return of democracy in 1978, but in the context of Basque separatism. -AFP
- SAPA