al-Qaeda has purportedly claimed responsibility for the series of bombings in Madrid, Spain today which left at least 190 people dead and 1,240 wounded, just three days before Spain’s general elections.
The attack has raised concern of a possible threat to domestic U.S. targets as it included a warning to the United States that a major strike is approaching.
“We announce the good news for the Muslims in the world that the strike of the black wind of death, the expected strike against America, is now at its final stage — 90 percent ready — and it is coming soon, by God’s will,” the claim said.
However, officials are uncertain whether al-Qaeda or the Basque separatist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) are behind the attacks.
A van containing several detonators and an Arabic-language tape of Koranic verses was also found near Madrid, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said later Thursday, announcing that new lines of investigation into the bombings were being opened. Until that point, suspicion had focused on Spain’s primary domestic terrorists, ETA.
Police were looking for at least two people seen jumping on and off one of the trains at a station in Madrid.
The bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite, a source at Aznar’s office said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A total of 10 bombs, nearly all in backpacks, exploded in a 15-minute span along nine miles of the commuter line - running from Santa Eugenia to the Madrid hub of Atocha - killing 190 people and injuring more than 1,240. Police found and detonated three other bombs.
The blasts began about 7:40 a.m., tearing through trains or platforms on the commuter line running to the Atocha station. At least two of the bombs went off in trains at that station.
On Feb. 29, titadine was among the explosives found packed into a van that had been pulled over outside Madrid. Two alleged ETA members were arrested, but their identities were withheld. The February ETA plot was to “generate a massacre in coming days, if possible, in the center of Madrid,” Justice Minister Jose Maria Michavila said then.
However, the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi said Thursday it had received a claim of responsibility for the Madrid train bombings issued in the name of al-Qaeda, the terror organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Earlier Thursday Spanish officials accused the Basque separatist terror group ETA of the bombings and have yet to comment on the al-Qaeda claim.
The five-page e-mail claim, signed by the shadowy Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, was received at the paper’s London offices. It said the brigade’s “death squad” had penetrated “one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain.”
“This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America’s ally in its war against Islam,” the claim said.
Asked about the claim of responsibility, White House spokesman Sean McCormack said, “we’ve seen the news reports and we’re going to determine what the facts are.”
Francisco Javier Ruperez, Spain’s ambassador to the United States, said he had “no doubt” that ETA was behind Thursday’s attacks. Ruperez, who was kidnapped by ETA in 1979, admitted there was “no smoking gun” linking al-Qaeda with ETA, but added that “at the end of the day,” terrorist organizations “tend to share the same sympathies ... the same aims.”
The ETA had been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its decades-old campaign to carve an independent Basque homeland out of territory straddling northern Spain and southwest France. Until now, the highest death toll in an ETA attack was 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “it’s too early to tell” who was behind the Madrid blasts, adding that “we’re not ruling anything out.”
Mansoor Ijaz, a foreign-affairs analyst for Fox News, said the attacks had many of the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation. He said it was evidence the pan-Islamic terror organization may be “joining hands with local terrorists.”
“This represents a dangerous mutated version of what al-Qaeda has been doing in other parts of the world,” Ijaz explained, “hitting three simultaneous targets, not necessarily in the same city but in the same area, with multiple explosions at each location.” Ijaz said Madrid was part of “an emerging pattern,” citing recent multiple bombings in Iraq that may have been al-Qaeda-inspired. He noted that Spain has been a staunch supporter of U.S.-led military efforts in Iraq.
