SPAIN: Spanish police probing the Madrid train bombings found the fingerprints on Saturday of two leading suspects at a rural house where traces of suspicious explosives were found, local media reported.
The house in Morata de Tajuna, southeast of Madrid, had been under surveillance for several days and police moved in on Friday.
Television and radio stations reported that police said they had found traces of explosives and detonators like those used in the attack and then discovered the fingerprints on Saturday. The prints reportedly matched those of Jamal Zougam and Abderrahim Zbakh. Interior Ministry officials were not available to confirm the findings.
Zougam allegedly has close ties to Islamist militant groups and is seen as the most important of the 18 suspects in custody.
Zbakh is accused of building the bombs by connecting the detonators to mobile phones. Ten bombs hidden inside backpacks tore apart four commuter trains almost simultaneously on March 11th, killing 190 people and wounding around 1,900.
But four other bombs failed to explode and one of those gave police a key clue in the case. The SIM card of the mobile phone it was connected to was traced to a small telephone centre run by Zougam in Madrid.
The Madrid investigation spread beyond Spain on Friday as German police searched the apartment of a Moroccan man who is one of those under arrest in Spain and said they were probing his possible links to militant groups.