Massacre in Madrid as backpack bombs blow trains apart

A series of bombs hidden in backpacks exploded in quick succession, blowing apart four commuter trains, killing at least 192 people and wounding more than 1,400.

Spain blamed Basque separatists, but a shadowy group claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaida for the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.

Panicked commuters trampled on each other, abandoning their bags and shoes, after three of the bombs went off in one train in the Atocha station in the heart of Madrid at the height of yesterday morning’s rush-hour.

Train cars were turned into twisted wrecks and platforms were strewn with corpses. Mobile phones rang unanswered on the bodies of the dead as frantic relatives tried to call them.

“March 11, 2004, now holds its place in the history of infamy,” prime minister Jose Maria Aznar said.

The bombing came three days ahead of Spain’s general election on Sunday. A major campaign issue was how to deal with ETA, the Basque militant group.

Campaigning for the election was called off and three days of mourning were declared.

It was also exactly two and a half years after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe’s worst since the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

The attacks also reawakened terrorism fears among investors. Stocks fell in London and in New York, where the Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 170 points. Today, Tokyo stocks opened sharply lower.

The 10 backpack bombs exploded in a 15-minute span, starting at 7.39am (6.39am Irish time), on trains along nine miles of commuter line from Santa Eugenia to the Atocha terminal, a bustling hub for tube, commuter and long-distance trains just south of the famed Prado Museum. Police also found and detonated three other bombs.

“An act of barbaric terrorism has engulfed Spain with profound pain, repulsion and anger,” King Juan Carlos said on national television.

Worst hit was a double-decker train at El Pozo station, where two bombs killed 70 people, fire brigade inspector Juan Redondo said. One body was blown on to the roof.

At the Santa Eugenia station, “there was one carriage totally blown apart. People were scattered all over the platforms. I saw legs and arms. I won’t forget this ever. I’ve seen horror”, said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance worker.

Forty coroners worked to identify remains, the national news agency Efe said, and a steady stream of taxis carried relatives to a sprawling convention centre that was turned into a makeshift mortuary.

Thousands of people across the country responded by taking part in spontaneous anti-terror rallies yesterday, standing silently in packed town squares.

The government called for nationwide anti-ETA demonstrations today, and millions were expected.

“Let us all unite with a single voice to fight these murderous and criminal terrorists,” government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana said on national television, urging Spaniards to turn out “in force”.

Who carried out the highly co-ordinated attack was a mystery. The government put the Basque separatist group ETA at the top of its list of suspects, although a group claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaida.

The e-mail claim, signed by the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri and received by the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi, said the brigade’s “death squad” had penetrated “one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain.”

“This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America’s ally in its war against Islam,” the claim said.

Spain had backed the US-led war on Iraq despite domestic opposition, and many al-Qaida-linked terrorists have been captured in Spain or were believed to have operated from here.

Spain’s government is studying the claim but still believes ETA is more likely to be responsible, a senior official in Aznar’s office says.

Security forces were not ruling out “any line of investigation”, interior minister Angel Acebes said.

The United States believes Al-Masri sometimes falsely claims to be acting on behalf of al-Qaida. The group took credit for blackouts in the United States and London last year.

If the attack was carried out by ETA, it could signal a radical and lethal change of strategy for the group that has largely targeted police and politicians in its decades-long fight for a separate Basque homeland.

But after police found a stolen van with seven detonators and the Arabic-language tape parked in a suburb near where the stricken trains originated, Acebes said: “I have just given instructions to the security forces not to rule out any line of investigation.”

A top Basque politician, Arnold Otegi, denied ETA was behind the blasts and blamed “Arab resistance”, noting Spain’s support for the Iraq war.

The government said ETA had tried a similar attack on Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a Madrid station that was not hit yesterday.

“ETA had been looking for a massacre,” said Acebes yesterday. “Unfortunately, today it achieved its goal.”

The interior ministry said tests showed the explosives used in the attacks were a kind of dynamite normally used by ETA.

The bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite also found in a bomb-laden van intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid, a source at Aznar’s office said. Officials blamed ETA then, too.