ETA bombs five gas stations in Madrid

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Saturday, December 4, 2004

MADRID –The Basque separatist group ETA was blamed for five explosions at gas stations in the Spanish capital of Madrid on Friday. The explosions claimed no casualties, but two police officers were lightly wounded.

An anonymous caller contacted the Basque newspaper Gara at 5.30pm local time, describing the location of the devices and naming ETA as responsible for the attacks. The bombings caused city-wide traffic jams, as police and rescue forces raced to secure the targets. The attacks ended a relatively peaceful phase of several months in the conflict between the Spanish central government and Basque extremists.

While leaders of ETA's political arm Batasuna have recently hinted at the possibility of a ceasefire, the assault makes any form of dialogue with ETA unlikely in the near future. ETA is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

References

Edward Owen "Eta explodes ceasefire hopes with five bombs in the Spanish capital". Times Online, 4 December, 2004

Emma Pinedo and Raquel Castillo "ETA bombs strangle Madrid". swissinfo, 3 December, 2004

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.