Terror
Comes To Madrid
By Elizabeth
Nash and Peter Popham
12 March 2004
Independent
It was just after 7.30 in the morning,
rush hour, and trains were trundling in from the suburbs. Then suddenly,
without warning, the workers coming from Fuenlabrada and Pozo de Tio
Raimundo were pitched into the front line of the "war on terror".
In just a quarter
an hour the centre of one of Europe's most civilised capitals, the thriving
heart of a proud young democracy, was turned into a scene of unspeakable
horror. Ten bombs, some concealed in backpacks, went off one after the
other: first in Atocha station, Madrid's Waterloo, then in the two stations
closest to Atocha down the line.
Terror struck without
warning in the heart of Madrid, twisting and buckling steel, tearing
scores of passengers into pieces, mutilating hundreds more.
The streets close
to the world-famous Prada Museum was full of smoke; the air was torn
with screams. Blood, bodies, arms and legs were hurled in all directions.
Truly, it was a vision from hell.
Eta was the immediate
suspect but late yesterday Spanish authorities said that police had
found a van with detonators and Koranic verses pointing towards the
possibility of an al-Qa'ida attack. A letter claiming responsibility
was received by Al-Quds Al-Arabi paper in London.
Traumatised survivors
groped for words to describe what they had seen. Anibal Altamirano,
a 26-year-old Ecuadorian who walked away from the carnage, said that
when the first bomb blew a hole in a train at Atocha station commuters
were too stunned to move, but when another bomb went off a few minutes
later the crowd fled screaming in panic. "People dropped everything
bags and shoes and ran, many trampling on others."
It was the worst
terror attack in Europe since Lockerbie 15 years ago. The toll dwarfed
all earlier bombings on the ground.
Al-Qa'ida has never
struck with such force on mainland Europe. Previous attacks by the Basque
organisation Eta were usually tightly focused and preceded by warnings.
It was hideously
senseless and cruel. It was a war, but the casualties were babies and
small children and labourers; the enemy stayed out of sight.
Corpses were entangled
in the shredded metal wreckage of carriages; body parts littered the
platforms. "I saw legs and arms. I won't forget this ever. I've
seen horror," said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance worker returning
from a third station, Santa Eugenia, where yet another bomb had exploded
on board a train.
"The train
was cut open like a can of tuna... We didn't know who to treat first.
There was a lot of blood, a lot of blood."
One passenger, Ana
Maria Mayor's told reporters, her voice cracking as she spoke: "I
saw a baby torn to bits."
Juan Redondo, a
fireman who came to the next station down the line, El Pozo, where another
bomb had gone off, described the scene as "butchery on a brutal
scale". Two bombs had erupted there in a double-decker train, and
at least 70 bodies were strewn across the platform. One body was blown
on to the station's roof, he said.
"It looked
like a platform of death," he said. "I've never seen anything
like it before.
"The recovery
of the bodies was very difficult. We didn't know what to pick up."
Fransisco Larios,
a young shopworker, said "I looked behind me and it was like a
war. People were thrown to the ground. There was smoke everywhere. I
saw a man with his leg impaled on a metal tube. Everyone was covered
with blood and many of those strewn about had part of their body missing:
feet, hands..."
At this point, Mr
Larios, who had escaped with minor cuts and bruises, burst into tears
and could not continue.
"My legs are
trembling," he choked, and sat suddenly on the ground. It was 8am,
20 minutes after he had got off his usual train from Fuenlabrada. He
had no sooner stepped on to the platform when the train opposite "broke
in half", he said.
Within hours the
Government blamed Eta, the terror organisation blacklisted by both Europe
and the USA that has been fighting for a homeland in north-east Spain
and south-west France since the 1960s. Authorities believe that blame
may lie with new, younger, hard-line leadership of the organisation.
Angel Acebes, the
Interior Minister, said: "It is absolutely clear and evident that
the terrorist organisation Eta was looking to commit a major attack...
The only thing different is the train station that was targeted."
Another Madrid station
was the target of a failed attack on Christmas Eve, when explosives
packed in luggage on a train headed for Madrid failed to go off.
The explosive used
in yesterday's blasts was titadine, a compressed dynamite that Eta has
used in the past. More explosives were found in the possession of an
alleged Eta member, who was said to have intended to put them aboard
a train.
But the leader of
the banned Basque freedom party Batasuna, Arnaldo Otegi, denied Basque
involvement. Instead he pointed the finger at what he called "the
Arab resistance".
He was not alone
in his suspicions. The attacks were so different from earlier Eta atrocities
that doubts were widespread.
French police said
that the blasts had none of the trademarks of Eta. Spanish police said
a van they had stopped in the suburb of Alcala, where some of the bombed
trains began their journeys, contained an audio tape with Koranic verses
and seven detonators.
Whoever was behind
the bombings, yesterday morning the centre of one of Europe's most ebullient,
pleasure-loving capitals was turned into a battlefield. And when the
screaming and the sirens stopped a weird silence fell.
Europe's noisiest
capital was hushed to a whisper. It was as if the volume was suddenly
turned to mute.
Madrilenos hurried
home, murmured into their mobile phones, crouched over the radios, calling
out to each other only the mounting tally of death as the morning wore
on.
Usually talkative
taxi drivers were laconic; even their ritual condemnation of separatist
murderers was cut short while we listened to the radio relaying the
death toll, the ministerial condemnations, the screams and the sobs,
respooled endlessly as the hours rolled by.
The city quickly
rallied to help the wounded. "This is our 11 September," said
Conchita Esperanza, heading to her job in the botanical gardens. Appeals
for blood donors were answered by a flood of volunteers, and soon queues
were snaking through the heart of the city to hastily deployed mobile
units.
In the 12 de Octubre
hospital, the ambulances were streaming into accident and emergency.
The entire hospital seemed to have been turned over to the rescue effort.
On the steps outside
groups huddled, hugged and wept. One young man staggered out, his head
and arm bound, his jeans ripped downwards from the hip. "He doesn't
want to talk" his companion said as she propelled him to a waiting
car.
A huge amphitheatre
in the bowels of the building was turned into an information centre
for the families. Jesus Gallego, 40, twirled a bottle of water in his
fingers and wore a huge bandage on his head. "I'm one of the lucky
ones," he said, "I only needed six or seven stitches in my
head. I'm just waiting for my family to pick me up."
Mr Gallego had been
caught by chance on the stricken train from his home town of Alcala
de Henares, a train that he had never taken before. "I was on my
way to a child cancer conference in Cuidad Real and I was going to take
the Ave from Atocha.
"I was able
to get out of the train through a hole in the side. Then I, and many
others, turned back into the train to try to help those trapped inside.
There was rubble everywhere. Firefighters arrived within 10 minutes,
and after the initial shock and confusion people reacted well."
In the Gregorio
Maranon hospital, on the other side of the capital, Virginia Androne,
60, from Romania, lay on a bed in a corridor, her left eye injured and
the hearing in her left ear almost gone. She was in a train when the
carriage was ripped apart.
"The window
fell on top of me. And then there were so many dead. To the left of
me and to the right, it was full of dead people. My husband has no idea
where I am. He doesn't know how to find me," Ms Androne said quietly
between shallow breaths.
An exhibition centre
in the swanky new business quarter by the airport, usually used for
EU summits or an international tourism fair, was transformed into a
makeshift mass mortuary. A convoy of more than 50 hearses was poised
in the car park, each with its coffin, waiting.
Bodies were brought
in from the three devastated railway stations. Families of the dead
were in a separate room, facing the ordeal of identifying the remains
of their mangled loved ones. An army of social workers and counsellors
converged upon those who waited in fear, feeding them water and sandwiches
while they waited for news.
Some came away shedding
tears of relief when told a relative had survived in a hospital. Others
were slumped against walls and pillars in despair. "No I'm not
looking for anyone any more. Unfortunately I've found her," said
one, who would not be named.
Alfonso Jimenez,
32, a volunteer psychologist who had been on the go all day, cradled
a cup of steaming coffee. "This morning I was working at a hospital
comforting the injured," he reflected.
"Here it's
a very different story. People are bereaved and devastated."
Throught the evening
streets remained subdued. Impromptu demonstrations had assembled and
dispersed.
Everyone felt that
life would never be the same. Madrilenos say the same thing ritualistically
after every terror atrocity, and there have been many in the past. But
there has never been an attack, and a toll, remotely like this.
All campaigning
for Sunday's general election has been cancelled. It has been a lacklustre
campaign, all voters seemed to agree, and even though 90 per cent of
Spaniards opposed the war in Iraq, José Maria Aznar's successor,
Mariano Rajoy, is expected to clinch it for the Popular Party.
Suddenly the whole
event seemed trivial, a meaningless sideshow to the war in which the
city had been engulfed, a war whose meaning had yet to be revealed.
Instead of yawning
at the politicians, today Madrilenos have a more urgent engagement.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to march through the capital in a
demonstration of grief, protest and solidarity with the victims of the
bombs.