A car bomb attack linked to the Basque separatist group ETA was avoided today when a detonator failed to trigger explosives packed into a car on a busy street in Madrid, officials said.
An estimated 30 to 40 kg (66 to 88 pounds) of dynamite were discovered in the vehicle, which caught fire when the detonator went off without causing an explosion.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the dynamite was part of eight tonnes of explosives stolen in France in 1999 by suspected ETA activists. TNT from that haul has been used in several fatal bomb attacks by the group since then.
A second explosion roughly an hour later in a nearby area of the city destroyed another vehicle, which could have been a getaway car used by the suspected ETA members after planting the first bomb, a police spokeswoman said.
ETA, blamed for 24 deaths over the past 13 months, routinely destroys evidence by blowing up cars used in assassinations.
One local resident said the first explosion was small and sounded like a car backfiring.
"At first we thought it was a small explosion and people were close by, as well as buses and cars," she told Reuters. "Then they ordered people away and there was another, bigger explosion."
Television pictures showed images of a car damaged by fire in a street shrouded in smoke. An Interior Ministry spokesman said police found a pressure cooker in the first vehicle. ETA often uses pressure cookers to contain explosives and direct the force of their blasts.
State radio said the target of the attack might have been an unidentified civil servant.
Reuters