MARCH 12, 2004
10 Bombs Shatter Trains in Madrid, Killing 192
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Ten bombs ripped through four commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush hour on Thursday, killing at least 192 people and wounding more than 1,400 in the deadliest terrorist attack on a European target since World War II.
The Spanish authorities initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA. But after finding a van near Madrid with detonators and a tape of Koran verses, they held open the possibility of Islamic terrorism.
A group claiming links to Al Qaeda took responsibility for the attacks in a letter delivered to an Arabic newspaper, but an American counterterrorism official said the claim should be viewed skeptically.
Spain, an American ally in the war on Iraq, has 1,300 troops stationed there and was explicitly threatened in an audiotape last October reportedly made by Osama bin Laden.
As the country struggled to absorb the devastation, three days before general elections, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said, ''March 11 now has its place in the history of infamy.''
The bombings came in coordinated explosions in quick succession shortly before 8 a.m. The police found and detonated three other bombs.
At the main Atocha commuter station in the heart of Madrid, just a block from the Prado Museum, an explosion cut a train in two, sending pieces of metal high into the air. Bloody victims crawled from mangled train cars and staggered into the streets. Other victims were found burned to death in their seats.
There, and at the nearby Santa Eugenia and El Pozo stations, broken bodies and body parts were thrown along the platforms as rescue workers struggled to separate the dead from the wounded.
Amet Oulabid, a 23-year-old carpenter, said he got off the front of the train at the Atocha station just seconds before the bomb went off in one of its rear cars.
''I saw bodies flying,'' he said. ''There was a security guard dripping with blood. People were pushing and running. I saw a woman who had fallen on the tracks because people were pushing so hard. I escaped with my life by a hair.''
At El Pozo, just east of downtown Madrid, Luz Elena Bustos, 42, got off a nearby bus just 10 minutes before the explosion at that station.
''There were pieces of flesh and ribs all over the road,'' she said. ''There were ribs, brains all over. I never saw anything like this. The train was blown apart. I saw a lot of smoke, people running all over, crying.''
People combed the city's major hospitals in search of family members who they thought were aboard the trains. ''Oh, please, God! This can't be happening,'' said Carmen Gomez, 47, sobbing as she studied a patient list in vain at Gregorio Maranon Hospital, seven hours after the terrorist attack. ''How could a human being do this?''
Most of the victims were ordinary middle- and working-class people and university students commuting into Madrid, though children were also among the dead.
Spanish authorities immediately pointed to the Basque group ETA, which has been seeking independence for more than three decades.
''It is absolutely clear that the terrorist organization ETA was seeking an attack with wide repercussions,'' Interior Minister Angel Acebes told a hastily called news conference. But later, he was less categorical, after investigators found the van with the detonators and the Koran tape.
The van, which had been stolen in Madrid on Feb. 28, was found in Alcala de Henares, the birthplace of Cervantes, which was the departure point for three of the four trains bombed Thursday morning.
''Because of this, I have just given instructions to the security forces not to rule out any line of investigation,'' Mr. Acebes said. But he added that ETA remained the ''main line of investigation.''
He said more than 220 pounds of dynamite packed into backpacks had been used in the attacks.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Batasuna, ETA's political wing, which has been banned in Spain, said ETA probably was not behind the attacks. He said the attack could have been the work of ''Arab resistance.''
Another senior Spanish official said in an interview that the bombs used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite found in a van containing 1,100 pounds of explosives that was intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid. Two suspected ETA members were arrested at the time.
The official added that the government believed that the dynamite was stolen from France three years ago. ''This material has a kind of signature on it,'' the official said.
On Dec. 24, the police foiled a plot that would have detonated two bombs in a train after it arrived at a Madrid station. They seized a man with a bomb in San Sebastian, a Basque city. He had a ticket for the train, and when the police halted the train and searched it, they found a second bomb.
The letter claiming responsibility for the attack on Thursday was delivered to Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based Arab newspaper. It also said an attack on the United States was on the final stages of preparation.
''We bring the good news to Muslims of the world that the expected 'winds of black death' strike against America is now in its final stage,'' the letter said, adding that the strike was ''90 percent'' ready ''and, God willing, near.''
The government declared a three-day period of mourning, and political parties called off all remaining campaign events, although the elections will proceed Sunday as scheduled.
Some Spaniards are calling the attacks the country's ''9/11,'' and the front page of a special edition of the biggest daily, El Pais, ran the headline, ''11-M,'' for ''11 Marzo.''
''All of Spain is suffering,'' said Mariano Rajoy, the front-runner in Sunday's election and leader of the governing Popular Party, who has made the fight against terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign and pledged to follow Mr. Aznar's policies. ''This is a moment to put aside differences and show unity with the victims and their families.''
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the leader of the Socialist Party and Mr. Rajoy's main rival, said, ''I hope that these scum, these criminals, fall as swiftly as possible into the hands of the police'' so ''we can put an end to ETA.''
The bombs were contained in plastic bags and backpacks that were planted on four trains. The police quickly sealed off the bomb sites and blocked off surrounding streets.
The police had been put on alert for a possible terrorist attack as the country prepared to go to the polls. But the attacks clearly took Mr. Aznar, his government and the Spanish people by surprise.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Aznar, who survived a terrorist attack by ETA in 1995, when he was the opposition leader, boasted that terrorism ''is a lot weaker than it was.''
The security situation seemed so secure that King Juan Carlos attended the soccer match on Wednesday evening between Spain's star-studded Real Madrid team and Munich.
On Thursday, the king, accompanied by his wife, Queen Sofia; their son and heir, Prince Felipe; and his fiancee, Letizia Ortiz, visited a hospital in central Madrid to comfort survivors and their families.
ETA has been fighting for a separate Basque homeland in northwestern Spain and southwestern France for more than three decades and has been branded a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
If ETA is found to be responsible, that could widen the margin of victory for Mr. Rajoy and improve the chances of the Popular Party to win an absolute majority of 350 seats.
It would also indicate a sharp change in its tactics and targets. ETA almost always gives warnings in advance and claims responsibility, and has never conducted an attack of this magnitude. Its deadliest attack came in Barcelona in 1987, when 21 people were killed in a supermarket.
ETA has been severely damaged by cooperation between Spain and France, and last year the group killed only 3 people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.
Thousands of people have died in Europe over the decades in violent attacks by groups like ETA in Spain and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, but no single incident has approached the scale of Thursday's attacks here.
Libyan terrorist operations killed 270 people in the bombing of an American airliner, Pan American Flight 103, over Scotland in 1988, and 171 people in a French airliner brought down over Africa in 1989.
Dale Fuchs contributed reporting for this article.