Three small bombs exploded today in places frequented by tourists in the capital of the island of Mallorca (Majorca), Spanish government officials said.
The explosions followed a phone warning made in the name of the Basque separatist group Eta, the website of the Spanish newspaper El Mundoreported, citing the Mallorcan ambulance service as saying there had been no reports of injuries.
"There has been a third explosion underneath the Plaza Mayor [the central square in Palma], but it was a small device, even weaker than the other two," a government spokeswoman said after the third bomb blast.
Eta has carried out three larger bomb explosions in the last two months which, with today's blasts, call into question the Spanish government's claim that a series of arrests has weakened the armed separatists.
The Spanish government has said for some time that the security forces have seriously weakened Eta. In April, top Eta commander Jurdan Martitegi was arrested in France.
Martitegi (28), was the fourth commander caught in less than a year. Rebel leaders have become progressively younger as Spanish prisons fill up with Eta's more experienced members.
Eta has said it will attack the region's new coalition government, which removed the moderate nationalist party from power for the first time in 28 years in Basque regional elections in March.
Sunday's first bomb exploded at Restaurante La Rigoletta in Palma de Mallorca after the restaurant was evacuated following a telephone call made in the name of Eta, El Mundoreported.
The second small bomb was found by police in a restaurant near La Rigoletta, and the third exploded in a shopping area beneath Palma's central square.
"There is a lot of confusion. They [the police] have evacuated all the restaurants [in the area] except for ours and they are not telling us anything," the owner of a restaurant said to Spanish TV channel CNN+.
The attacks are not the first on Spanish holiday resorts, which Eta has targeted in the past with small bombs in an attempt to disrupt Spain's important tourist industry.
The government spokeswoman said it was too early to tell if the bombs would harm tourism in the Balearic Islands, popular destinations for English and German tourists.
Eta claimed responsibility for three car bomb attacks over the last two months, according to a statement from the armed group published in the Basque-language newspaper Garatoday.
The separatists killed police inspector Eduardo Puelles in a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Bilbao on June 19th and injured 46 people with a car bomb outside a Civil Guard barracks in the city of Burgos on July 30th.
The group has already struck in Mallorca with a car bomb attack on July 30th which killed two officers of Spain's civil guard.
Eta is held responsible for more than 800 deaths in the past 40 years in its campaign to carve out an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southern France.
Reuters