Car Bomb Wounds Dozens in Northern Spain

Car Bomb Wounds Dozens in Northern Spain
By VICTORIA BURNETT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/world/europe/30spain.html?ref=global-home


MADRID — A powerful car bomb exploded early Wednesday outside a police barracks in northern Spain that houses 90 families, ripping off part of the outer wall and wounding dozens of people. The Spanish authorities immediately blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the attack, though here was no customary warning call ahead of the explosion.

The explosion occurred just before 4 a.m. as some 120 people, a third of them children, slept in the barracks in Burgos, according to Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Many of the families were away on vacation, he said.

The blast wounded close to 60 people, including 6 children, spokesmen for the Interior Ministry and the police said. It sent the van that held the explosives flying into the air, shattered windows and left a huge crater in the ground. Most of the injuries were from flying glass and none were serious, according to a police spokesman, who requested anonymity in line with police rules.

Analysts who closely follow ETA say the arrests of several of the group’s military and political leaders by the Spanish and French police over the past year have put the group under pressure. Those analysts say they believe the group has also been weakened by an internal struggle between hard-liners who want to continue the campaign of violence and those who want a political solution.

Mr. Rubalcaba said the bombing was “a huge, failed attack that sought fatal victims” among the sleeping families.

“Today we see that these are savage, crazed murderers, which makes them more dangerous but does not make them stronger,” he said during a televised news conference in Burgos.

Mr. Rubalcaba would not comment on news reports that indicated that the bombers had loaded the van with more than 400 pounds of explosives.

Television images showed charred wreckage from the van presumed to have caused the blast and gaping holes across the facade of the tall brick building, where windows had been blown out. One neighbor, who was interviewed by Spanish National Television, said she was thrown from her bed by the blast.

ETA, which is considered a terrorist group by the State Department and the European Union, has killed more than 825 people during its decades-old violent campaign for an independent Basque homeland.

The group, which frequently attacks the police, was blamed for a car bomb that killed a policeman last month as he got into his vehicle just outside the Basque city of Bilbao.

A car bomb near a police barracks in Legutiano, in the northern Basque region, in June last year killed a policeman who was on guard outside. Members of the civil guard, which is a rural police force, often live in barracks.

ETA 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.