Second body found in rubble of Madrid car bombing

Rescuers have found the body of the second Ecuadorian who was missing in the rubble of a huge Madrid Airport car-bomb blast blamed on the armed Basque separatist group Eta.

Using a small camera, firefighters were able to spot an arm and forearm believed to be of Ecuadorian immigrant Diego Armando Estacio, aged 19.

The remains were found inside his car, which was flattened by tons of rubble but it has not yet been extricated, and this could take hours, said Alfonso del Alamo, a spokesman for the city’s emergency rescue services.

“It is going to be a long and difficult work, of many hours,” del Alamo said. Estacio was believed to have been sleeping in a car in the multi-storey car park destroyed in Saturday’s explosion at Madrid airport.

Another Ecuadorian, Carlos Palate, 35, who was at the airport separately and also sleeping in a parked car, was found on Wednesday in the mounds of concrete and metal rubble.

Discovery of the bodies confirmed the Basque separatist group’s first fatal attack in more than three years.

The previous one was in May 2003, a car bombing that killed two policemen in the northern town of Sanguesa.