Three Car Bombs Hit Spain as EU Summit Begins

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, June 22, 2002

Three Car Bombs Hit Spain as EU Summit Begins

Three car bombs exploded on Friday at Spanish cities, injuring at least six people, as European Union (EU) leaders started a two-day summit at a tightly guarded convention center in nearby Seville.

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Three Car Bombs Hit Spain as EU Summit Begins

Two car bombs exploded on Friday at Spanish Mediterranean cities, injuring at least six people, as European Union (EU) leaders started a two-day summit ata tightly guarded convention center in nearby Seville.

The first blast in the resort town of Fuengirola came early in the morning, just hours before the summit began. The town is a few hundreds of kilometers from Seville.

Jose Torres Hurtado, an Interior Ministry official, confirmed that six people were injured, one seriously, in the first blast near the Piramides hotel in Fuengirola.

Among the injured were two British youngsters and a couple, along with a Spanish woman and a Moroccan, Torres Hurtado told Spanish radio. He said there was little material damage to the hotel itself.

National news agency Efe said most of the victims in Fuengirolawere struck by flying glass. A 33-year-old British tourist was in critical condition with a severe shrapnel wound in the chest aftercrossing a police cordon set up shortly before the detonation of acar loaded with at least 30 kilograms of explosives.

The second explosion followed a few hours later at about 1 p.m.(1100 GMT) in a downtown street of Marbella, only 27 kilometers away from Fuengirola.

No one was wounded in the second bomb attack despite damage to nearby vehicles, Marbella Mayor Julian Munoz told Onda Cero radio.

Efe reported that an office building on Arturo Rubinstein boulevard had been evacuated moments before the explosion following a warning call to an emergency services number in the northern Basque region.

The third attack occurred at 22:15 hours, local time (2015 GMT) in the parking lot of a Sagasta street building in Zaragoza, causing light wounds to a guard and huge material damage.

Police said that 15 minutes before the explosion, a person called the headquarters of the association of Highway Assistance of the Basque Country to warn of the car-bomb.

The vehicle, a blue Ford Courier with license plates of Huesca, exploded when the shopping center was still closed.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Spanish authorities were quick to blame Basque separatist group ETA, a group which was labeled as a terrorist organization by Spain, the European Union and the United States.

The blasts came a day after ETA issued a statement calling on the European leaders at their summit to press Spain and France to grant autonomy to the Basques.

ETA has been fighting since the late 1960s in a bid to set up an independent state out of lands straddling northern Spain and southwest France. It has frequently carried out car bombings.

The group's violence has claimed more than 800 lives.

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