Explosion Kills Two Civil Guard Officers on Spanish Resort Island

Two civil guard officers were killed Thursday when their booby-trapped car exploded near a barracks on the Spanish island of Majorca, local police said a day after a bomb in northern Spain injured dozens.

Photo: Explosion Kills Two Civil Guard Officers on Spanish Resort Island

"Two civil guard officers who were in an official vehicle were killed in an explosion," a spokewoman for the civil guards on the Balearic islands told AFP.

Yesterday, a bomb packed into a van exploded outside the family quarters of a police barracks in the northern Spanish city of Burgos, an attack that the government said was the work of Basque terrorist group ETA. The group, which has been blamed for 800 killings in a campaign for an independent nation, will reach its 50th anniversary tomorrow, the Efe news service said.

Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez told reporters her meeting with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was interrupted as the prime minister was informed “of what appears to be a terrible attack.”

Majorca is a major tourist destination for European visitors and is also where Spain’s royal family spends its vacations, Bloomberg reports.

Spanish National radio said the blast shortly before 2 p.m. was caused by a bomb attached to a Civil Guard jeep and that there were also several people injured.

King Juan Carlos is vacationing on the island, but there was no indication he was the target or anywhere near the explosion. In 1995, Spanish authorities thwarted a plot to shoot the king with a long-range rifle while he was on vacation in Mallorca, The Associated Press reports.