'Basque' car bomb defused
Suspected Basque separatists set a car bomb in the northern Spanish city of Logrono, but the detonator failed and explosives experts managed to defuse it, officials said today.
The compact car containing up to 80 kilos of explosives was parked next to a Defence Ministry building and timed to go off late last night, the Interior Ministry office in Logrono said.
Pedro Sanz Alonso, president of the regional government of La Rioja, of which Logrono is the capital, blamed the armed Basque separatist group Eta and said that had the bomb gone off “it could have caused a catastrophe”.
Police cordoned off the area around the building after a warning call was received in the Basque region. At about 10.30pm Irish time the bomb’s detonator went off, but failed to ignite the explosives.
Bomb-disposal experts took about eight hours to defuse the bomb, said Jose Antonio Ulecia, the Spanish Interior Ministry’s top representative in La Rioja.
