Bomb police focus on stolen van

Investigators probing the Madrid terror blasts are focusing on a stolen white van that contained detonators, and eyewitness reports of three young men getting out of it.

The men were carrying rucksacks towards the station from which three bombed trains originated, a senior Spanish police official said today.

Officials have said the bombs used in the train attacks were concealed in rucksacks.

The van was found in Alcala de Henares outside Madrid hours after the blasts that killed 200 people aboard four morning rush-hour trains. Inside the van police also found an Arabic-language cassette tape with Koranic verses.

Alcala de Henares is the town where three of the four bombed trains originated.

“It is one of the main focuses of the investigation,” the official said of the white Renault van. “It is very important.”

The official declined to comment on reports in the newspaper El Pais that the van was used to carry the explosives that blew up the trains.

Police have interviewed two witnesses in Alcala de Henares, including a doorman who said he saw three young men carrying rucksacks towards the station in that town, the official said.

The doorman saw the men get out of the van and “walk toward the train carrying backpacks and he was struck by the fact that they were wearing ski masks when the weather was not suited for that kind of clothing,” the official said. “They were young men.”

Interior Minister Angel Acebes reiterated Friday that the government considered the armed Basque separatist group Eta the prime suspect in the bombings, rather than Islamic militants.

Acebes said that on Thursday night police had found a gym bag aboard one of the bombed trains containing explosives of a Spanish brand called Goma 2 Eco.

But Acebes stopped short of saying Eta used that kind of explosive. The police official insisted this did not weaken the government’s hypothesis of Eta being the prime suspect.