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| Sunday, 4 April 2004 |
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Fear runs high in Spain after rail bomb found MADRID, Saturday (Reuters) High-speed trains to southern Spain began running again on Saturday after a bomb found on the line was defused but fears ran high that Islamic extremists could strike again after the Madrid rail bombings. The 12-kg (26-lb) bomb found on Friday on the high-speed line from Madrid to the southern city of Seville revived tension that was just beginning to subside after the suspected al Qaeda commuter train bombs on March 11 killed 191 people. The bomb was so like those used to blow up the four Madrid trains that the same group of Islamic militants is believed to be responsible in both cases, Spanish newspapers said on Saturday. The prestigious AVE trains, which can reach speeds of 350 kmh (220 mph), began running again on Saturday after being suspended on Friday while police painstakingly checked the track. But passengers were anxious and trains which had been almost fully booked a few days earlier were half-empty, said a Reuters correspondent travelling on one of the first high-speed trains out of Madrid. "It always affects you. You can't be calm. Everything seems relatively under control but you don't know what will happen," said Jose Antonio Perez, a 40-year-old chemist on his way to Cordoba in southern Spain. Normally, the trains would have been packed with travellers leaving town for the Holy Week holiday. The chairman of Spanish state railway company Renfe Miguel Corsini took the first high-speed service to Seville to show it was safe. The train arrived without incident. El Pais newspaper reported that Spain is the main al Qaeda base in Europe and said police believed al Qaeda could strike again here. Spain was once used as a rear base by Islamic militants, but having failed with attempted attacks in other European countries, "sleeper cells" were now carrying out operations in Spain, it said. Police suspected 200 people in Spain of cooperating with radical Islamist groups, it said. HUNDREDS OF DEATHS AVERTED The latest bomb, attached to a detonator with a 136-metre cable, was spotted by railway workers about 60 km (35 miles) south of Madrid on Friday. Investigators believe attackers planned to derail a high-speed train. If the plan had worked, Spanish newspapers said, hundreds of people could have been killed. Spanish authorities, anxious to reassure citizens, ordered the army to help protect the high-speed railway and other key installations, using helicopters and armoured vehicles. In Britain, a Department of Transport spokesman said the department had taken note of developments in Spain. "What has been announced in Madrid today will be considered with a view towards lessons to be learned, and this will be fed into our security regime," he said. Spain's outgoing Popular Party government declined to speculate on who planted the latest bomb. But Spanish newspapers pointed the finger at Islamic militants and said, if this theory was confirmed, it posed a grave security problem for Spain. The challenge will fall to Spain's incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who takes office later this month after a surprise victory in a general election held three days after the Madrid bombings. Zapatero has promised to pull out Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq if the United Nations does not take charge there by the end of June, undoing the policy of outgoing pro-American Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. El Pais said the similar dynamite and detonator used in Friday's bomb and the March 11 Madrid bombs "suggests that in both cases it is the same terrorist organisation, supposedly the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group." Spain has identified the militant Islamic group as the prime suspect in the March 11 bombings. Several newspapers reported that the Spanish embassy in Egypt had recently received a letter signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades and al Qaeda threatening to attack embassies, consulates and other Spanish interests in north Africa and the southern and eastern Mediterranean region. The letter said the attacks could be avoided if Spain withdrew its soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan in the next four weeks, El Mundo reported. A letter sent to a London-based Arabic newspaper on March 11 claimed responsibility for the Madrid train attacks on behalf of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades - a group that aligns itself to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Spain is holding 15 people, many of them Moroccan, over the March 11 Madrid attacks. |
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