Mar 13, 12:45 PM EST
Spain Mourns Bomb Victims on Election Eve
By CIARAN GILES
Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Police hunted Saturday for three men seen clad in ski masks carrying backpacks toward trains that were bombed in Spain's worst terrorist attack, while grieving relatives began burying some of the 200 dead.
Uncertainty about who carried out the bombings left Spaniards perplexed ahead of parliamentary elections Sunday. So far, autopsies of the dead show no evidence of suicide bombings, Spain's interior minister said, suggesting that Islamic terrorists who use such tactics might not have been involved.
Angel Acebes told a news conference that the Basque separatist group ETA was still the No. 1 suspect in Thursday's bombings, but the government has not ruled out al-Qaida, which had threatened to target U.S. allies from the Iraq war, including Spain.
"We are working intensely along both lines," Acebes said. "The priority has to be the terrorist group that is most prominent in Spain."
The Spanish radio station Cadena Ser, which is close to the opposition Socialist Party, quoted sources at the national intelligence agency CNI as saying agents were "99 percent sure" that Islamic militants, not Basque separatists, were behind the attacks.
The agents believe a 10-15 member cell placed the bombs on the trains and may have fled the country, Cadena Ser said, quoting unnamed sources at the CNI. But CNI director Jorge Dezcallar denied the report, telling the news agency Efe that agents do not favor one line of investigation over another.
The toll from Thursday's attacks rose to 200 on Saturday when a wounded man died in a hospital, Europa Press said, citing Spain's Health Ministry. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in 2002 were deadlier.
As a cold drizzle fell on Madrid, what would normally be a day of leisure and reflection before the parliamentary elections instead brought more anguish and mourning. Families started burying and cremating their dead.
Madrid's biggest funeral home, Tanatorio Sur, was so overcrowded that some coffins were placed in a room normally used for staff meetings. Outside, hearses carried coffins in and out all morning.
Investigators were focusing on a stolen white van found in the town of Alcala de Henares outside Madrid hours after the blasts. Police found detonators and an Arabic-language cassette tape with Quranic verses inside. Alcala de Henares is the town where three of the four bombed trains originated.
A doorman told police he saw three young men carrying knapsacks toward the station in Alcala de Henares, a senior police official said Saturday on condition of anonymity. Officials have said the bombs used in the train attacks were concealed in knapsacks.
The doorman saw the men get out of the van and "walk toward the train carrying backpacks and he was struck by the fact that they were wearing ski masks when the weather was not suited for that kind of clothing," the official said.
"It is one of the main focuses of the investigation," the official said. "It is very important."
A London-based Arabic newspaper also received a claim of responsibility in al-Qaida's name that called the attack "part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam."
The attack's lethal coordination and timing - 10 explosions within 15 minutes - suggested al-Qaida. But the compressed dynamite used in the backpack bombs is an explosive favored by ETA.
ETA issued an apparently unprecedented denial Friday, saying it had nothing to do with the bombings. It has claimed responsibility for more than 800 deaths since 1968 in its fight for an independent state in the northern Basque region.
Debate on who is behind the attacks could sway voters in Sunday's election.
If ETA is deemed responsible, that could boost support for Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's hand-picked candidate to succeed him as prime minister. Both have supported a crackdown on ETA, ruling out talks and backing a ban on ETA's political wing, Batasuna.
However, if Thursday's bombings are seen by voters as the work of al-Qaida, that could draw their attention to Aznar's vastly unpopular decision to endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and deploy Spanish troops there.
Opinion polls have put Rajoy 3-5 percentage points ahead of Socialist candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. No surveys have been released since the attacks.
Aznar, in power since 1996, is honoring a pledge not to seek a third term, saying he wants renewal in government and his party.
In a show of national unity, massive crowds gathered in Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and even in Spain's Canary Islands off western Africa on Friday night to protest the attack. State TV said nationwide, more than 11 million marched - one-quarter of Spain's 42 million people.
In Madrid, black bows of mourning dotted the city, on shop windows, on flags draped from balconies, and on lapels.
Spanish radio station Cadena Ser broadcast a 12-second recording of an unidentified woman who had called a colleague's voice mail after an initial blast on a train at the Atocha station.
The woman, who survived, was in the process of fleeing as she frantically says: "I'm in Atocha. There's a bomb on the train! We had to -" and then two more blasts are heard.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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) like France and Germany?
