The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi said late Thursday it had received a claim of responsibility issued by The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri in the name of Al-Qaeda for the Madrid attacks that killed at least 190 people and wounded more than 1,200.
Police probing the attacks earlier Thursday evening found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape with Koranic verses.
For their part, U.S. intelligence agencies said before the claim of the responsibility it was too early to conclude who was behind the explosions, Reuters reported. "There are characteristics of each," the official said, referring to ETA and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
"You have multiple attacks, multiple explosions in different locations in a short period of time which is very al Qaeda-ish," the official told Reuters.
A short time after the blasts, the leader of the banned Basque separatist party Batasuna has dismissed a Spanish government claim that the armed Basque group ETA carried out the train blasts and instead blamed "Arab resistance" to Spain's role in the Iraq war.
Party chief Arnaldo Otegi stated he "refused to believe" that ETA was behind the coordinated bombs.
In a radio interview, cited by AFP in the Basque city of San Sebastian, on the north coast of Spain, Otegi stressed that "ETA has always issued a warning whenever it left a bomb to explode" and added: "There is every reason to think that no kind of warning was given today."
Earlier, Government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana had condemned what he called "an attack on Spanish democracy" and dubbed ETA a "criminal gang of killers".
But Otegi blamed "the Arab resistance", noting the example of Spain's role in the US-led war against Iraq.
"Spain maintains occupation forces in Iraq and we should not forget that it had a responsibility for the war in Iraq," he conveyed.
However, Spanish officials brushed aside suggestions Thursday's attacks were carried out by Muslims. "It is absolutely clear that the terrorist organization ETA was seeking an attack with wide repercussions," Interior Minister Angel Acebes told a press conference.
Before the Iraq invasion, Spain was the strongest supporter at the UN of the United States and Britain and a co-sponsor of their unsuccessful attempt to get a resolution through the Security Council to authorize a military strike against Iraq.
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
