Britons hurt as Eta hits Spanish tourist towns

Three British tourists, including two children, were injured when the Basque separatist group Eta exploded car bombs outside hotels in the southern Spanish resorts of Fuengirola and Marbella yesterday.

The explosions, which injured three other people, were timed to coincide with a summit of EU leaders, including Tony Blair and the foreign secretary Jack Straw, in Seville, 100 miles away.

A British man, named last night as Marios Gabriel, 33, from north London, underwent an operation at a Marbella hospital after shrapnel from the Fuengirola blast lodged in his chest.

"He has a deep wound in his chest and splinters which are affecting his lungs, diaphragm and spleen," a spokeswoman for the British embassy in Madrid said. Doctors described his condition last night as "very serious".

Police said Mr Gabriel was up early as he had been preparing to sell St George's flags to tourists watching the England v Brazil football match in local bars.

Two unnamed British teenagers who were slightly wounded by flying glass in the same explosion were treated at a nearby first aid post and went back to their families.

The Fuengirola explosion, shortly after 7am, rocked the 10-storey Los Piramides hotel, which was full of British, American and German tourists.

"We were just lying in bed and all of a sudden we were woken up by enormous loads of smoke, loads of flames. Then there was this terrible scary silence and then loads of people were running everywhere," said Margaret Morrissey, 58, from Dorchester, Dorset, after the bomb exploded 50 metres from her room.

The ground floor and cafeteria of the hotel had been evacuated by police who received a tip off from Eta, but most guests were still asleep. The blast blew out windows in much of the hotel, with the worst affected area housing a group of 50 American schoolgirls.

"What was really weird is that they shut all the doors and shut you in the building. In the room where we are sitting, all the windows are blown in and there's still lots of glass all over the floor," Mrs Morrissey said.

"It's the closest I've ever been to dying. I go away for a little peace in a nice little Spanish holiday town and end up yards away froma bomb," she said.

Spanish media reported yesterday that Mr Gabriel had crossed the police tape cordoning off the area around the car bomb after misunder standing instructions shouted to him by police.

The second car bomb exploded five hours later outside the four-star Hotel Sultan in the glitzy resort town of Marbella. Police had time to cordon off the area and explode the bomb, which caused significant damage to nearby buildings and cars.

Jack Straw, who was in Seville, denounced the attack and pledged to do all he could to help the victims and their families.

"I would like to express my profound concern and anger at the results of the two car bombs which have exploded in southern Spain," he said. "My condemnation of this outrage is absolute and is the same regardless of the citizenship of those who have been injured. Our hearts go out to all of those injured and their families and friends."

He reminded journalists that he had placed Eta on a banned list in Britain while he was home secretary.

Spanish government officials said that Eta seemed to have resumed a campaign against tourist targets, though they claimed there was no permanent Eta unit working in the popular Costa del Sol area that includes both Fuengirola and Marbella as well as Torremolinos and Mijas.

"This must have been an itinerant Eta unit that probably came here, left the bomb, and went again," said Jose Torres, a government official.

"Eta attacks where and when it can, and when there are meetings that can give it a greater media impact, they try to take advantage," a government spokesman Pio Cabanillas told reporters in Seville. The blasts came despite recent Spanish reassurances that they had twice foiled Eta campaigns against tourist targets this summer after five Eta members were detained in France and Valencia.

British tour operators said Eta bomb attacks had not stopped British tourists, some 12 million of whom travel to Spain every year, from travelling to the area the past.

"Britons are pretty sanguine about this sort of thing and are usually fairly calm," said a spokeswoman for the Association of British Travel Agents.