March 11th, a sad day for Spain
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments
Yesterday 192 person died and over 1400 were wounded in a set of deadly blasts in Madrid. The evens happened in the early rush-hour, between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning when 3 different trains were blown up, some of them more than once. The trains were coming from the outskirts of Madrid towards one of the biggest stations of the city, Atocha. It is believed that the target was to get two of those trains to get to Atocha and the same time, and make them blow up there so that the roof of the station would collapse and the number of the dead people would be even higher. But they missed because one of the trains was late...First investigations pointed to ETA as the culprint, for they had already tried three times to strike a major blow in the last few months. All those attemps were timely stopped by the police (they even stopped a van loaded with 500kg of explosives when it was being driven to Madrid in December, since they were planning to blow it up during Christmas Eve last year) But in a twist of events, late yesterday Al-Qaeda submitted a letter to a London-based arabic newspaper acknowledging themselves as the authors of such brutal massacre. The letter states that they had successfully infiltrated the infidel Europe and directly ask Spanish president, Mr. Aznar, where the United States are now and how they are going to protect Spain.
However, president Aznar has stated again -even after this letter became known- that this is a maneuver to intoxicate the media and distract people, and that the government still holds ETA as guilty of the blasts.
There has been a lot of coverage in all internaltional media so far so I need no say more:
Scores killed in Spanish railway attacks (AlJazeera.net)
'Al-Qaida letter' claims Spain bombings (AlJazeera.net)
Investigation of Bombings in Madrid Yields Conflicting Clues (NY Times)
Another Silent Noon in Madrid (NY Times, by Javier Mar̀as, Spanish writer and NYT collaborator)
Madrid Blasts: Who is to blame? (BBC News)
In pictures: Madrid blasts (BBC News)
Commuters describe Madrid blast chaos (BBC News)
Probe into Spain attack widens; at least 192 killed (USA Today)
After blasts, panicked passengers ran everywhere, including darkened tunnels (USA Today)
Al-Qaeda tactics may have inspired bombers (Financial Times)
A new - and bloody - style of attack (Guardian UK)
And many more (Google News)