The Tunisian whom Spain suspects of masterminding last month's Madrid train bombings blew himself up with three accomplices after police cornered them in a suburban apartment, officials said today.
Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, known as El Tunecino (The Tunisian), was one of several men who yelled defiant Arabic slogans before detonating a charge that also killed a policeman, Interior Minister Mr Angel Acebes told a news conference.
Another of the dead, Moroccan Abdennabi Kounjaa, was also among six suspects being hunted in connection with the March 11th bombings of four commuter trains, which killed 191 people.
Four corpses were found in the apartment, not three as previously thought, Mr Acebes said. One body, which had yet to be identified, was wearing a suicide-bomb belt of the type favoured by Palestinian militants, the minister added.
A further two or three people may have escaped before the explosion, he said, adding that the group appeared to be planning more attacks.
Mr Acebes said police believed the same group of Islamist radicals planted a bomb discovered on Friday. A bag containing 12 kg (26 pounds) of dynamite was found wedged underneath a high-speed rail line from Madrid to Seville.
In the six arrest warrants issued on Thursday, 35-year-old Farkhet was identified as the "personal leader and coordinator" of the suspected Islamist group implicated in the attacks, which killed 191 people three days before Spain's general election.
He had been agitating for "jihad" (holy war) in Madrid in mid-2003 if not earlier, the warrant said.
"They shouted 'God is great' or something like that" in Arabic just before the explosion, one of the police officers who took part in Saturday's assault told El Pais newspaper.
The blast also wounded 15 police officers, four of whom were still in hospital on Sunday morning, a spokesman said.
Bomb experts had yet to determine what type of explosives were used in the Saturday night blast, he said.
Police swooped on the working-class Madrid suburb of Leganes on Saturday evening in an attempt to round up several suspects.
The occupants of the first-floor flat spotted the police and began firing while shouting and chanting in Arabic, officials and local residents said. The police were about to raid the flat when the suspects set off an explosion, demolishing the front of the five-storey apartment block.
The powerful blast sent a pall of smoke into the air, left a gaping hole in the front of the block, damaged nearby buildings and left a pile of rubble on the ground.
Police cordoned off the area. Residents of surrounding blocks were evacuated and 30 families had to spend the night at a hotel because they could not return to their damaged homes.
"This is a very quiet neighbourhood. There's no conflict here. But it's places like this where these people try to hide," said local resident Juan Manuel Velez.
Spain is holding 15 people, many of them Moroccan, over the March 11th attacks.
Mr Acebes has singled out the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group - a shadowy organisation believed to be tied to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network - as prime suspect in the bombings.
Investigators believe Friday's defused bomb was intended to derail the high-speed train running from Madrid to Seville in an attack that might have killed hundreds.