Spanish police make huge ETA explosives seizure

Bomb-making chemicals discovered by police in a truck driven by a suspected member of the Basque separatist group ETA were intended to explode in Madrid and would have caused a “massacre”, Spanish justice minister Jose Maria Michavila said today.

The averted potential disaster is the second in little more than two months linked to ETA.

On Christmas Eve, police found a 55 lb bomb on a train headed to Madrid. A second one of about the same size also was seized. Two alleged ETA members were arrested.

Two other men were arrested today near Canaveras, a village near Cuenca, about 90 miles south east of Madrid.

In snowy pre-dawn darkness, the Civil Guard stopped a small truck and found 1,100 lbs of potassium chloride compound, 66 lbs of dynamite and 99 yards of core fuse and an electrical detonator.

They evacuated the town of several hundred residents. The chemicals and dynamite were rendered harmless, and townspeople returned to their homes about five hours later, shortly before noon.

The plan was to “generate a massacre in coming days, if possible, in the centre of Madrid,” Michavila said.

Interior minister Angel Acebes said the explosion was planned for “today, tomorrow or the day after,”and had the power to blast a deep crater about 39 yards wide.

Following the discovery of the possible truck bomb, police raided homes in Basque Country, apparently searching for weapons or explosives.

ETA is thought to be reeling from setbacks including arrests and weapons seizures in France and Spain, and the banning of political groups that support it.

It’s now listed as a terrorist group by US and European Union governments, hampering money flows.

ETA is “weaker than ever,” Javier Arenas, the ruling Popular Party’s third-ranking official, said, “but it’s going to keep trying to fill Spanish society with blood.”