The Spanish government called for calm as troops and police patrolled potential targets after a series of bombings and a purported al-Qaeda threat to create rivers of blood in Spain.
Frontpage newspaper pictures yesterday showed combat troops guarding a dam, adding to the feeling of a country under siege.
Police were deployed on Madrid's metro on Monday, a job normally left to private guards, and troops were dotted along the route of the high-speed Madrid-Seville rail line that was the target of a foiled bomb attack last week.
Spain has ramped up security since 191 people were killed when suspected Islamic militants bombed four commuter trains in Madrid on March 11.
Up to six of the suspected train bombers blew themselves up on Saturday during a police siege in a suburb of the city, killing one police officer.
The government says they had been planning further attacks.
Police, who returned to the site yesterday to continue the search for clues and remains, say a handful of accomplices remain at large.
"There could have been a series of Holy Week bombings, probably starting this weekend," a source close to the investigation said, adding that police were unsure how much of an arsenal remained in the fugitives' hands.
Interior Minister Angel Acebes tried to reassure people.
"We must all maintain the greatest calm and allow the security forces to act," Acebes said on state radio on Monday, adding there had been "quite a few false alarms" during the day. "All possible measures have been taken in places considered especially sensitive. There is a big deployment of security forces, including Civil Guard, national police and the army."
Investigators are analyzing a letter purportedly from the militant al-Qaeda network to ABC newspaper threatening more bombs unless Spain withdraws troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"If our demands are not satisfied, we declare war and we swear by Almighty God that we will turn your country into an inferno and we will make blood flow like rivers," the letter said, according to an ABC Spanish translation.
The Interior Ministry said it gave some credence to the letter, and ABC said yesterday that police were comparing it with documents found in the apartment raided on Saturday to compare handwriting.
El Mundo said police had found two machineguns in the apartment of the same type as those carried by militants in a video claiming responsibility for the train attacks.
Spanish authorities announced another arrest in the Madrid train bombings on Monday. Sixteen people are now in custody.
The militants who blew themselves up as police surrounded their apartment in the suburb of Leganes included at least three named on international arrest warrants for the March 11 attacks.
El Mundo newspaper said one of them, dubbed "El Tunecino" (The Tunisian), had been reported to police by his landlord on March 8 after he disappeared without paying his rent.
"The police told me they couldn't do anything, his papers were in order," it quoted the landlord as saying.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS