Dressed in mourning black, Spaniards yesterday commemorated their country’s deadliest peace-time attack, a decade to the day since al-Qaeda-inspired bombers blew up four packed commuter trains and killed 191 people.
Relatives of people killed on the trains, which were carrying rush hour passengers from Madrid’s suburbs when they exploded on March 11, 2004, filled the pews in the city’s Almudena Cathedral for a solemn memorial mass.
A single bouquet of red and yellow flowers lay before the altar as 1,000 mourners took their seats, including relatives in black and members of the emergency services in their green and yellow uniforms.
Photo: AFP
Spanish King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy joined in the solemn ceremony, leading the mourning by a nation still wary of violent Islamist radicals and “lone wolves” lured to their cause.
Juan Carlos, leaning on a walking stick after recent hip surgery, and his wife, Queen Sofia, embraced leaders of victims’ associations at the door of the cathedral before entering to doleful organ music and incense smoke.
The archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, leading the mass, remembered the victims in a homily.
“They died and suffered, and we suffer, because there were some who with blood-curdling premeditation were willing to kill innocent people,” he said.
After the attacks, however, “love triumphed over hate and life over death,,” as Spain rallied round to help the victims, he added.
A series of shrapnel-filled bombs detonated around 7:40am on March 11, 2004, in packed trains headed to Madrid’s main Atocha station, massacring 191 people, wounding about 2,000 and leaving many mentally scarred to this day.
Antonio Gomez, a 48-year-old bank computer specialist, was in a train at Atocha when bombs detonated, leaving him with a broken left leg.
“There were mutilated people, people thrown on the ground, people in a very bad state. I was one of the better off,” he said.
These days Gomez switches the channel when he sees television reports of the attack.
“On the 11th I will probably go to the cinema or watch the Disney Channel,” he said.
Spanish courts eventually sentenced 18 people for the bomb attacks. The seven chief suspects committed suicide weeks after the attack, by blowing themselves up in an apartment near Madrid, also killing a policeman.
On the eve of the 10th anniversary, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said al-Qaeda members refer often in their statements to “Al Andalus,” in reference to Spain.
“Clearly Spain forms part of the strategic objectives of global jihad. We are not the only ones, but we are in their sights,” he said.
The Madrid train bombing changed the immediate course of Spanish politics.
Then-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative government immediately blamed the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
However, al-Qaeda soon claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were punishment for Spain’s role, under Aznar, in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
In a general election three days after the bombings, voters punished Aznar, handing an unforeseen victory to Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Since the day of the bombings, 472 suspected Islamic extremists have been arrested in Spain, Fernandez Diaz said.
The Spanish counterterrorist service’s alert level is at its second-highest category, signifying “a likely risk of attack”, he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not