170 people Dead, and 600 wounded by bombing in Madrid

I heard this early this morning from the radio. More details onThe Globe and Mail.

Bloody hell. Made all the more awful by the fact that Elicia and I where at the Atocha train station station last November, arriving from Sevilla on one of those trains. The ETA Basque separatist group is suspected in this massacre, based on the type of materials used, and a van that was stopped at the end of February. The timing of the attack would appear to be related to the Spainish General Election this Sunday.

I remeber that when we boarded the (EVA) train (in Sevilla), we did go though a security check and pass thought what I thought was a metal detector.

This is the current exerpt from CNN :

A coordinated wave of bomb attacks on Madrid's commuter train system today killed at least 186 people and wounded over 1,000 at the height of the city's rush hour. There has been no claim of responsibility in the bombings, but Spanish officials are blaming terrorists from the Basque separatist group ETA..

Here is a pdf of the Madrid subway map planometro.pdf (~ 90 Kb) I got from here The Atocha train station (Atocha Renfe is the metro/subway station) is in the lower Right half part on the Blue No 1 line (Plaza de Castilla / Congosto). http://www.softdoc.es/madrid_guide/info/trains.html has more info on the station, including this : Atocha is the largest and most used train station.

Russell Beattie blogs about this. Russell has just returned to the US, with his (Spanish) wife and child, after living for several years in Madrid.
His wifes family is OK.
Boing Boing has an entry with links to Spainish Bloggers and this image is going around wrt the bombing :


Update > 5pm EST, Via the BBC : A statement attributed to al-Qaeda claims responsibility. Although "other indicators pointed to .. Eta". Perhaps they are working together? Current count of Sadness : at least 190 people.

Massive demonstrations are planned for tomorrow at 7PM in cities all over Spain. Expect live blog coverage.