Costa Blanca News Report Foreshadows Spainish Massacre

SPANISH BOMBS:

Okay, here's the google news rundown:
The animals have struck again. i don't really care if its al-queda or the ETA, the people who would do such things are a cancer.

you won't pick this up on google, so i'm here for the spanish lowdown....looks like the basques (if in fact its them) almost had two in the bag. this is from costa blanca news last week:

GUARDIA CIVIL INTERCEPT 536 KILOS OF EXPLOSIVES
GUARDIA CIVIL intercepted a van driven by ETA terrorists carrying 536 kilos of explosives in Cañaveras, Cuenca, on Sunday. Home Office sources say the terrorists were on their way to Madrid where they planned to set off the huge bomb during the election campaign. Experts say there were enough explosives to have destroyed all buildings within 60 metres and injure people within a 1.5 kilometres radius. A Guardia Civil explosives' team detonated the device on a wasteland site while the population of Cañaveras was gathered in a local school as a temporary refuge. No personal or material damage was reported. The two young terrorists were arrested.
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no qualms about naming a terrorist a terrorist here. just like the bbc when referring to the IRA and not al-queda. if britain suffers a 9/11 type attack, the beeb might change its tune.

back on topic here, today's horrific attack was probably supposed to be much bigger than it was. the guardian wants to think outside the box and questions whether it was them or not. i'm going to go with the basques for now....

Prime suspects

In the aftermath of the Madrid bomb attacks, Jeremy Lennard questions whether Basque separatists were really responsible

Thursday March 11, 2004

No group made an immediate claim of responsibility for today's terrorist outrage in Madrid, but politicians and journalists blamed the Basque separatist group Eta for the train bombings, which left 173 people dead.
The group - whose full name, Euskadi Ta Askatasuma, means Basque Homeland and Freedom - has been carrying out bombings and assassinations in Spain for more than 35 years. The timing of the attack, 72 hours before Sunday's general election, would fit with the group's aim of disrupting the political process in Madrid as part of its campaign for an independent Basque country straddling the Pyrenees and the French-Spanish border.

But Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Eta's outlawed political wing, Batasuna, said he did not think the group was responsible, suggesting that "sectors of Arab resistance" may have been behind the attacks. In reality, the way in which today's rush-hour bombings were carried out bears few similarities with Eta's previous modus operandi.

The scale of the attacks is unprecedented in Spain and has led to speculation that al-Qaida may be responsible, perhaps because of Spain's support for the US-led attack on Iraq last year. The blasts come a week after al-Qaida was blamed by the US for coordinated bombings in Iraq that caused carnage and huge loss of life.
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a-ha. now i see the reason for this article. thanks for the tip off, its all the americans fault. gotcha.

here's the real news, thanks:

Analysis: Massacre in Madrid
By Roland Flamini
Chief International Correspondent
Published 3/11/2004 10:40 AM
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It's being called the worst terrorist attack in Western Europe since World War II, but the question is -- who is responsible?

Coordinated bomb blasts in Madrid early Thursday that have so far claimed 192 dead plus another 593 wounded were immediately blamed on ETA, the Basque terror group -- a charge quickly denied by political sources with ties to ETA, who in turn said it was the work of "Arab terrorists."

Thirteen explosions ripped through three commuter trains in the Spanish capital's main stations. At that early hour of 7:30 a.m., the victims were mostly blue-collar workers and college students.

As ambulances and police sped to the stricken stations -- the big, modern Atocha complex, Santa Eugenia, and El Pozo, all in the metropolitan area -- the news spread, and Spaniards were stunned by the extent of the devastation.

Shocking television images that spared none of the gory details showed rescue workers pulling victims and bodies out of the twisted wreckage of the trains. Across the city, cell phones failed to function because of overloaded circuits as people tried in vain to contact relations and friends.

In reponse to a public appeal for blood donors, crowds gathered outside the high school near Atocha station requisitioned to serve as a makeshift first aid post and at the main hospitals.

The attack shatters the calm of an election campaign that ends Sunday, when 35 million Spaniards are due to go to the polls to elect a new government. Political campaigning was immediately suspended, and there was some speculation that the election itself would be postponed.

The irony is that for the first time in years ETA terrorism had been a minor campaign issue because many of its leaders and key strategists had been arrested, and political analysts were saying that it had lost a lot of its earlier menace.
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I hope the net result of this is the same as the Omagh bombing had on the IRA: an ashamed terrorist group stops its armed struggle and picks up the democratic torch (to a degree, anyways). it could happen, both groups have a catholic conscience. who knows.