Madrid bomb injures 14
2001-05-12 20:47
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)