Dozens hurt as car bomb explodes outside Spanish barracks

Dozens of people were injured when a powerful car bomb exploded early today in northern Spain outside a barracks housing police officers and their families.

The blast in Burgos left 46 people wounded from flying glass and caused major damage in the area.

The attack was blamed on Basque separatist group ETA.

Regional ministry representative Miguel Alejo said 38 of the wounded were treated in hospitals. Many of the injured were Civil Guard police officers and family members.

The bomb detonated and left a crater that had filled with water from broken underground pipes, Alejo said.

“The car used to cause the explosion has been displaced some 70m (230ft) so that gives you an idea of the power of the blast,” he said.

Police and emergency services did not receive any warning that a bomb had been planted, but the explosion had the hallmarks of an ETA attack, Alejo said. It was not immediately clear how many people were in the building at the time.

ETA, which has killed more than 825 people since it launched a campaign in 1968 for an independent homeland in Basque region of northern Spain, typically phones in warnings that a bomb is about to explode giving authorities time to evacuate the area.

The last attack blamed on the group was July 10 when a bomb exploded outside an office of the Spanish prime minister’s party in the Basque town of Durango, causing significant damage but no injuries.

The group’s last fatal attack took place June 19, when a bomb attached to the underside of a car killed a Spanish police detective whose job was to investigate ETA.

Television images today showed considerable damage to a 14-storey barracks building in Burgos and many residential dwellings around it with windows and some walls blown in by the power of the explosion.

It is common for members of the paramilitary Civil Guard police force to live in barracks with their spouses and children.

The force is chiefly in charge of policing rural areas and guarding official buildings.

In an attack on May 14, 2008, ETA killed a Civil Guard officer in a car bombing outside a barracks in the Basque town of Legutiano. There were 29 people in the building at the time.

Burgos is an important regional capital and contains a historic city centre with important tourist attractions.

ETA, whose name is a Basque-language acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom, had declared what it called a permanent cease-fire in 2006, but reverted to violence within months after peace talks with the Spanish government went nowhere.

Dozens of alleged members of the organisation have been arrested in recent years in Spain and France including several of its supposed leaders.