Madrid train blasts kill 192

MADRID, Spain -- Ten terrorist bombs tore through trains and stations along a commuter line at the height of Madrid's morning rush hour Thursday, killing 192 people and wounding more than 1,400 others before this weekend's general elections. Officials blamed Basque separatists for the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.\n"This is mass murder," said a somber Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar following an emergency cabinet meeting, vowing to hunt down the attackers and ruling out negotiations with the ETA separatist group.\nThe bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite also found in a bomb-laden van intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid, Spain, a source at Aznar's office said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Officials blamed ETA then, too.\nBut a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "It's too early to tell. We're not ruling anything out."\nPanicked commuters abandoned bags and their shoes as they trampled each other to escape the Atocha terminal, where bombs struck two trains. Some fled into darkened, dangerous tunnels at the station, a bustling hub for subway, commuter and long-distance trains just south of Madrid's famed Prado Museum.\nThe bodies of the dead, some with their cellphones ringing unanswered as frantic relatives tried to contact them, were carried away by rescue workers. The wounded, faces bloodied, sat on curbs as buses were pressed into service as ambulances.\nOne firefighter said he saw 70 bodies along a platform at El Pozo station, just east of downtown Madrid. One corpse had been blown onto the roof.\nA total of 10 bombs exploded in a 10-minute span along nine miles of the commuter line -- running from Santa Eugenia to the Madrid hub of Atocha -- killing 192 people and injuring more than 1,400, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.\nPolice found and detonated three other bombs.\nThe blasts began about 7:50 a.m., tearing through trains or platforms on the commuter line running to the Atocha station. At least two of the bombs went off in trains at that station.\nWorst hit was a double-decker train at the El Pozo station, where two bombs killed 70 people, fire department inspector Juan Redondo said. El Pozo is about six miles from Atocha.\nBefore the Thursday bombings, ETA had been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its decades-old campaign to carve an independent Basque homeland from territory straddling northern Spain and southwest France.\nHowever, ETA attacks have been on a lesser scale than Thursday's bombings, with the largest toll being 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.\nSpanish officials had said ETA was against the ropes after the arrest last year of more than 150 members or collaborators in Spain and France, including the leaders of ETA's commando network. Last year, ETA killed three people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.\n"ETA had been looking for a massacre in Spain," Acebes said, citing recent thwarted attacks. "Unfortunately, today it achieved its goal."\nSpain held peace talks with ETA in the late 1980s and again in 1998, after the group declared a cease-fire that lasted 14 months. But ETA resumed attacks, and Aznar has insisted on crushing it with police measures.\n"No negotiation is possible or desirable with these assassins who so many times have sown death all around Spain," Aznar said Thursday.\nHe said ETA tried a similar attack Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a Madrid station that was not hit Thursday. He also noted the Feb. 29 police interception of a Madrid-bound van packed with more than 1,100 pounds of explosives. Authorities blamed ETA.\n"Therefore, it is absolutely clear and evident that the terrorist organization ETA was looking to commit a major attack," Acebes said. "The only thing that varies is the train station that was targeted."\nA top Basque politician, Arnold Otegi, denied the separatists were behind the blasts and blamed "Arab resistance," noting that Spain's government backed the Iraq war despite domestic opposition. Many al Qaeda-linked terrorists also were captured in Spain or were believed to have operated from there.\nOtegi told Radio Popular in San Sebastian, Spain, that ETA always phones in warnings before attacking. Acebes said there was no warning Thursday.\nPresident Bush called Aznar to express solidarity and sympathy, condemning "this vicious attack of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.\n"The United States stands resolutely with Spain in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and against the particular threat that Spain faces from the evil of ETA terrorism," added Secretary of State Colin Powell.\nMore than eight in 10 Spaniards said in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken last month they are worried about the threat of terrorism in their country. That was the highest level of concern about terrorism in five European countries polled -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.\nRescue workers were overwhelmed, said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance driver who went to Santa Eugenia station, about six miles southeast of the Atocha station.\n"There was one carriage totally blown apart. People were scattered all over the platforms. I saw legs and arms. I won't forget this ever. I've seen horror," Sanchez said.\nShards of twisted metal were scattered by rails in the Atocha station at the spot where an explosion severed a train in two.\n"I saw many things explode in the air ... it was horrible," said Juani Fernandez, 50, a civil servant who was on the platform waiting to go to work.\n"People started to scream and run, some bumping into each other, and as we ran there was another explosion. I saw people with blood pouring from them, people on the ground," Fernandez said.\n"Those responsible for this tragedy will be arrested, and they will pay very dearly for it," Acebes said at Atocha station.\nThe attacks traumatized Spain on the eve of Sunday's general election.\nThe campaign was largely dominated by separatist tensions in regions like the Basque country, with both the ruling conservative Popular Party and the opposition Socialists ruling out talks with ETA.\nThe government convened anti-ETA rallies nationwide for Friday evening and announced three days of mourning.\n"What a horror," said the Basque regional president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, who insisted ETA does not represent the Basque people. "When ETA attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces," he said in the Basque capital Vitoria.\n"This is one of those days that you don't want to live through," said opposition Socialist party spokesman Jesus Caldera. "ETA must be defeated," referring to the group as "those terrorists, those animals."\nIn London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the attacks terrorist atrocities and a "disgusting assault on the very principle of European democracy."\nStraw said Britain stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Spain and was ready to send any kind of material help needed.