Six injured in Spanish car bombings
Six people were injured after a series of terrorist car bombings in Spain.
A British man was seriously injured after he was hit by shrapnel from one of three terrorist car bomb attacks in Spain.
The 33-year-old tourist from London, who was not being named, was one of six casualties of the first blast yesterday morning, outside the Hotel Las Piramides, in Fuengirola on the Costa Del Sol.
Last night he underwent an operation to stop bleeding from his chest, said a spokeswoman for the Coast Del Sol Hospital in Marbella, after the bomb left shrapnel splinters in his lungs, diaphragm and spleen.
‘‘His condition is still serious but he is out of danger and is recuperating in intensive care,’’ she added.
She said the injured man’s family was flying out to Spain today to be at his bedside.
The attacks are being blamed on the Basque separatist terrorist group, Eta.
A Moroccan child and a Spanish couple also suffered minor injuries in the first attack, when a grey Peugeot 205 exploded shortly after 7am (6am Irish time), while many in the resort were asleep in their hotels.
Others were already pouring gathering in bars to watch England play Brazil in the World Cup.
A second blast went off in Marbella at 1.05pm local time, six hours after the first blast, but there were no reports of injuries.
A third explosion last night rocked the north eastern city of Zaragoza. Police said a policeman, a security guard and a passing French national sustained minor injuries in the explosion in the car park of the Corte Ingles department store.
The attacks took place as European leaders, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, gathered for an EU Summit in Seville, southern Spain.
The towns of Marbella and Fuengirola are part of a dense Costa del Sol group of seaside resorts.
The attacks came only a week after the authorities found 288lbs of dynamite and other explosives, along with detonators, in woods near Valencia.
The blast followed a telephone warning in the name of Eta to the emergency services in the northern Basque city of San Sebastian.
Eta, whose name is a Basque-language acronym that stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, has been fighting since the late 1960s to carve an independent state out of lands between northern Spain and south-west France.
Eta’s violent campaign has killed more than 800 people and the terrorists have targeted Spain’s tourist resorts several times in the past.
