Bombers Wreak Havoc in Madrid

At least 173 people were today reported dead and many more injured this morning in a series of rush-hour explosions at Madrid train stations.
The attack - Spain's deadliest-ever terrorist bombing - was blamed by Spanish authorities on the Basque separatist group Eta. It comes ahead of general election on Sunday.

Spain's interior ministry put the death toll at 131 people and 400 wounded but there are fears that it could rise higher.

The bombs were detonated near simultaneously at 7.35am local time (6.35am GMT). The interior minister, Angel Acebes, said they went off without any warning.

A leader of the Batasuna political party, which is banned in Spain for its alleged links to Eta, said he did not believe the armed separatists were behind the bombs.

"The modus operandi, the high number of victims and the way it was carried out make me think, and I have a hypothesis in mind, that yes it may have been an operative cell from the Arab resistance," Arnold Otegi told the Spanish news agency Efe.

The largest attack was on a commuter train pulling into the city's main Atocha station. Earlier reports said at least 40 people were killed as the explosion ripped out the central section of the red and white train carriage.

Juani Fernández, 50, a civil servant on the platform who had been going to take the train to work, said: "I saw many things explode in the air, I don't know what. It was horrible.

"People started to scream and run, some bumping into each other, and as we ran there was another explosion. I saw people with blood pouring from them, people on the ground."

Early reports on the website of the Spanish newspaper El País said 15 others died in an explosion at the smaller Santa Eugenia station and 12 were killed at El Pozo. Both stations are on commuter lines to Atocha.

A woman who lives near El Pozo station, site of another bomb attack, told Spanish national radio: "The scene I am seeing is hellish. People are running towards Atocha however they can."

Television footage at Atocha showed crowds of bloodied people in tears walking away from the station. Those too shocked or injured to move sat on the roads and pavements outside.

Emilio Benito, a spokesman for the ambulance service Samur, told state radio that around 250 people were injured the Atocha blast.

There was no claim of responsibility but police were on high alert for Basque separatist violence ahead of general elections on Sunday.

Regional tensions and debate over how to fight Eta, listed by the EU and US as a terrorist group, have emerged as dominant themes in the campaigning. A spokesman for the opposition socialist party said the group had to be defeated. "This is one of those days that you don't want to live through," said Jesus Caldera.

The ruling party candidate for prime minister Mariano Rajoy has suspended his campaign to return to Madrid.

The Basque regional president Juan Jose Ibarretxe said Eta did not represent the Basque people. "When Eta attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces."

If Eta is responsible, today's bombs will be its deadliest attack since the deaths of 21 people in the 1987 bombing of a Barcelona supermarket.

In recent years the group has been seen to be in retreat as joint French-Spanish police operations have arrested many key members, but it is believed to have maintained an operational capacity.

On February 29 police intercepted a Madrid-bound van packed with more than 500 kilos of explosives, and blamed Eta.

A bomb attack on Chamartén, another main Madrid rail station, was thwarted on Christmas Eve when police arrested two suspected Eta members.