SPAIN: Two terrorist bombs injured 13 people yesterday in almost simultaneous attacks in tourist hotels in Alicante and Benidorm.
Four of the injured were policemen - one of them in a serious condition - and most of the others were foreigners studying in a language school next door to the Alicante hotel.
The hotels had been evacuated by police after a phone call to the Basque newspaper Gara warned that ETA had planted bombs in the Residencia Nadal in Benidorm and the Bahia Alacant Hotel in Alicante. Although the call was received at 11 a.m., and the caller warned that the blasts were timed for 12.30 p.m., the first bomb went off at 12.05 p.m. in Alicante and the second one five minutes later in Benidorm.
Interior Minister, Mr Angel Acebes said the terrorists had deliberately given the wrong time in the hope of causing more casualties. "It was a deliberate trap to catch innocent citizens, workers and tourists to create maximum chaos and damage," he said.
The Lord Mayor of Belfast, Mr Martin Morgan, was in a chemist shop in Benidorm just 40 yards away from the blast there.
"There was a huge bang followed by clouds of smoke," he told the BBC. "The first reaction was that this might be a gas explosion but then you could smell the sulphur and you just knew it was a bomb."
A 30-year-old Dutch man is in a critical condition in the intensive care unit in Alicante University Hospital with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his arm. A 24-year-old German man is reported to be serious but out of danger after surgeons operated on deep cuts to his head and neck. Other patients admitted to the hospital were a Swedish woman, a Briton, two Russians and two Spanish teachers. The four police officers injured in Benidorm are receiving treatment in Villajoyosa Hospital.
Police say the bombs were in bags in the hotel bedrooms left by visitors who had rented the rooms two days earlier. Mr Juan Cotino, the government delegate in the region, said that the terrorists almost certainly spent at least one night in their rooms before leaving their bombs. The 10-storey Bahia Alacant Hotel has recently been completely modernised, and police believe that it was thanks to this that the building withstood the blast without sustaining structural damage.
News of the bombs reached Madrid as Mr José Maria Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, was meeting the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in the Moncloa Palace to discuss the next European ministers' meeting.
They expressed their shock at the attacks and Mr Aznar called for calm. Earlier this week ETA had received a serious blow to its financial structure with the arrest in Mexico of the men alleged to be responsible for the transfer of ETA funds.
Authorities fear that this could mark the start of an ETA summer bombing campaign similar to previous years when they detonated bombs on beaches, in hotels, restaurants and other places frequented by tourists. Although many of the "beach bombs" were small explosive devices, aimed at creating publicity for their cause and frightening tourists away from Spain, six people have died since 1980. Last summer two people were killed in the resort of Santa Pola, near Benidorm, and more than 20 were injured in a wave of half a dozen bomb blasts along the Spanish coastline.