Spanish bomb blast injures 14
A large explosion destroyed part of an underground car park in Madrid, damaging scores of vehicles and sending smoke spewing out onto a central square after a military procession passed by it with US marines taking part.
Authorities said 14 people, including four policemen, were injured and most were treated on the spot for smoke inhalation.
‘‘Firefighters have combed the area and there’s no one else,’’ said Mayor Jose Maria Alvarez del Manzano said today.
The explosion occurred a few minutes before midnight at the Plaza de Colon square, authorities said.
City fire department spokesman Juan Redondo said the blast blew a large hole in the floor of a parking lot under the square, damaging 67 cars and 17 towing vehicles.
He said the blast resembled an August 27 car bomb explosion at Madrid’s Barajas airport that has been blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.
Radio Nacional quoted the mayor saying the explosion came from a car that had been towed to the garage, a municipal deposit for illegally parked vehicles. Telemadrid television station said the blast came from a Ford Fiesta.
Earlier in the day, an annual military parade passed by the square for the Dia de la Hispanidad, Spain’s armed forces day. The tribune with King Juan Carlos and other prominent figures was located only a hundred yards from the site of the blast.
This year, for the first time, US marines took part in the procession in a tribute to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
After the blast, huge traffic jams formed on the Paseo de la Castellana boulevard, a main thoroughfare through the city and route of the military parade.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. However, the outlawed Basque group routinely detonates car bombs as part of its violent campaign for an independent state in the northern Basque region of Spain.
ETA, which stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, has claimed responsibility for killing around 800 people, mainly public figures, since its first assassination of a Spanish policeman in 1968.
ETA’s last killings of a town councillor and a policeman - were on July 14. However, the group has been blamed for several explosions, including a car bomb in the Basque regional capital of Vitoria on October 1.
