National
ETA car bomb in Calahorra contained 70 kilos of explosives
By h.b.
Mar 23, 2008 - 9:15 AM

The Spanish Ministry for the Interior has said that it believes that the Basque terrorist group ETA ‘Vizcaya Commando’ was responsible for the car bomb attack outside the Civil Guard barracks in Calahorra in La Rioja on Friday. Anti-terrorist sources consider the Vizcaya unit is led by the activists Jurdan Martitegi and Arkaitz Goikoetxea and contains at least three people.

Closed circuit cameras captured the image of a hooded man parking the vehicle, and showed another ETA activist driving the getaway vehicle and a third was needed to keep a watch on the car owners being held hostage.

There was widespread material damage by only some slight cuts and bruises caused by the blast which happened around 2pm. A warning had been given in the form of a phone call to the DYA road assistance association in Vizcaya in the name of ETA half an hour before it went off. Police consider the device contained some 70 kilos of explosives.

The bomb was placed in a blue Honda Civic which was blown across the street by the force of the explosion. The owners of the vehicle where found later on Friday afternoon, tied up in a building in a mountainous region some 100kms away. They have told the police that their car was taken from at gunpoint during the morning.

Some 1000 people gathered outside the Calahorra Town Hall on Saturday in protest at the explosion. The same barracks suffered another ETA attack, again without victims, back in 1983.