Blast shakes Madrid airport

Published December 31, 2006

MADRID, Dec 30: An explosion rocked a parking lot at Madrid’s airport on Saturday morning, injuring at least one person, officials said.

The blast came about 9:30am (0830GMT) at the airport’s new Terminal Four, said Javier Ayuso, a spokesman for the emergency rescue services of the Madrid city government.

He said he could not say if the blast was from a car bomb.

The national news agency Efe said there was a warning call to authorities in the Basque region before the explosion.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Saturday suspended dialogue with ETA Basque guerrillas after a bomb wrecked a car park at Madrid’s international airport, breaking a nine-month truce.

“I have decided to suspend all initiatives for dialogue with ETA,” Zapatero told a news conference.

The explosion brought down several concrete floors of the multi-storey car park at about 9am (0800 GMT), an hour after the first of three telephone warnings of an attack at Barajas Airport’s ultra-modern Terminal Four, officials said.

The attack took place on a day Barajas was crowded with holiday travellers.

“I want to firmly condemn this attack, the attack ends nine months without ETA violence, it breaks ETA’s permanent ceasefire,” Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference.—AP

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