Bomb Attack Injured 46 in Spain

A car bomb exploded outside a Civil Guard barracks in the northern Spanish city of Burgos early on Wednesday, slightly injuring 46 people, an emergency services spokesman said.

Photo: Bomb Attack Injured 46 in Spain

Part of the barracks facade collapsed into the street when the bomb went off around 4.30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. EDT), Reuters reports.

The car was parked at the back of the barracks, where police officers and their families were sleeping, and there was no telephone warning of the attack, Spanish media reports said, Times Online reports.

Meanwhile National radio blamed the Basque separatist organisation ETA for the attack, which it said had caused heavy damage.

ETA has frequently targeted the civil guard in its 41-year campaign to carve a Basque homeland out of northern Spain and southwestern France.

The group, considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, is blamed for the deaths of 825 people, AFP reports.

Miguel Alejo Vicente, the government’s representative in the region of Castilla-Leon condemned this act of terrorism and said: “They have no future but the dock and jail.”

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government called off talks with ETA in late 2006 after the group broke a cease-fire with an attack at Madrid’s Barajas airport that killed two people. The government has said it will never sit down with the terrorists again.

French and Spanish police have stepped up cooperation to crack down on ETA and police have arrested 55 suspected members this year, 21 of them in France, according to data from the Interior Ministry, Bloomberg reports.