Spanish blast: Preliminary tests reveal no trace of bomb

A petrol powered toy car blew up after a toddler had taken it into his grandmother’s car in a Basque resort today, killing the woman and leaving the boy blind and with brain damage.

Spanish police said preliminary forensic analyses revealed no traces of a bomb, suggesting an accident. However, investigators had not ruled out the possibility that the explosion was an attack by the Basque terror group Eta.

The blast in the centre of San Sebastian, which is packed with tourists and a destination for ferries from Britain, rattled windows and created confusion, but caused little damage outside the vehicle.

The 16-month-old boy and was rushed to hospital where doctors said he had lost his sight.

He was undergoing a 14 hour operation for a cranial fracture and brain haemorrhaging and treatment for burns.

His four-year-old brother was slightly injured.

The blast occurred inside the family car when the boy was playing with a remote control toy car after leaving a bar-restaurant owned by his aunt.

Reports described the toy as a petrol-powered remote control vehicle meant for adults.

The aunt told police two toys, a giraffe and the toy car had been left at the bar during the weekend and she had given them to her nephews. Police had initially suspected the car was booby-trapped with an explosive device.

The police identified the grandmother only as a 62-year-old woman.

The bar-restaurant is located in the old quarter of the city, a haven for youth gangs sympathetic to the armed separatist group Eta and who frequently set fire to banks and public buildings or petrol bomb patrol cars.

Although no one took responsibility for the blast, Eta has been blamed for 12 killings so far this year, including several by car bombs.

It has killed some 800 people in its 33 year violent campaign to carve out an independent Basque homeland from a region straddling northern Spain and southwest France.

Eta warned earlier in the year it would target popular tourist destinations and warned travellers to stay away from Spain.

On Saturday, a bomb exploded outside a hotel in Salou, on the Mediterranean coast south of Barcelona.

Spanish media reported that about 170 tourists staying in the resort cut short their holidays after the blast.

An anonymous caller speaking in the name of Eta had alerted authorities just an hour before the blast, allowing hundreds of tourists to escape, and those injured sustained minor cuts or bruises in the rush to evacuate the hotel.

Last month a massive car bomb was defused at Malaga airport on the Costa del Sol a few days after an Eta woman bomber blew herself up in a holiday apartment.