Platform of death in the heart of Madrid

4.00pm - By LIZ NASH in Madrid

The horror of terrorism arrived in Europe yesterday when 10 co-ordinated bomb blasts on commuter trains in Madrid killed more than 190 people and wounded more than 1000.

Many of the victims were blue-collar workers coming in to the city from working class areas. One man who walked away from the carnage said that when the first bomb blew a hole in a train at Atocha station commuters were too stunned to move - but then another bomb went off a few minutes later, and the crowd fled screaming in panic.

"People dropped everything - bags and shoes - and ran, many trampling on others," said Anibal Altamirano, a 26-year-old Ecuadorian.

Eta was the immediate suspect but late yesterday Spanish authorities said police had found a van with detonators and Koranic verses pointing towards the possibility of an al-Qaeda attack. A letter claiming responsibility was received by Al-Quds Al-Arabi paper in London.

Whatever organisation was behind it, it was the worst terror attack in Europe since Lockerbie 15 years ago, and the death toll dwarfed all earlier bombings on the ground.

Striking without warning in the heart of Madrid in the middle of the rush hour, powerful bombs concealed in backpacks ripped through four jam-packed commuter trains, twisting and buckling the steel, tearing scores of passengers into pieces, mutilating hundreds more.

Al-Qaeda has never struck with such force on mainland Europe and previous attacks by the Basque organisation Eta were usually tightly focused and preceded by warnings.

Juan Redondo, a fireman who came to the next station down the line, El Pozo, where another bomb had gone off, described the scene as "butchery on a brutal scale."

Two bombs had erupted in a double-decker train, and at least 70 bodies were strewn across the platform.

"It looked like a platform of death," Mr Redondo said. "I've never seen anything like it before. The recovery of the bodies was very difficult. We didn't know what to pick up."

One body was blown onto the station's roof, he said.

Corpses were entangled in the shredded metal wreckage of train cars, and body parts littered the platforms.

"I saw legs and arms. I won't forget this ever. I've seen horror," said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance worker returning from a third station, Santa Eugenia, where yet another bomb had exploded on board a train.

"The train was cut open like a can of tuna ... We didn't know who to treat first. There was a lot of blood, a lot of blood."

One passenger, Ana Maria Mayor's told reporters, "I saw a baby torn to bits," her voice cracking as she spoke.

Fransisco Larios, a young shopworker, said "I looked behind me and it was like a war. People were thrown to the ground. There was smoke everywhere. I saw a man with his leg impaled on a metal tube. Everyone was covered with blood and many of those strewn about had part of their body missing: feet, hands ..."

At this point, Mr Larios, who had escaped with minor cuts and bruises, burst into tears and couldn't continue. "My legs are trembling," he choked, and sat suddenly on the ground.

It was 8am, 20 minutes after he had got off his usual train from Fuenlabrada. He had no sooner stepped on to platform two than the train opposite "broke in half".
Meanwhile a little up the line in the station at Pozo de Tio Raimundo, one of the poorest working class districts of Madrid, there were similar scenes of carnage.

Rafael Martin, 53, an office worker heading for his usual train to work said: "I thought it was a gas explosion. It practically lifted me from the floor. I went to the scene and saw firemen hacking through the train with a motor saw to haul the bodies out. I saw people lifting out the wounded in the train seats where they sat, people dead, torn to fragments."

The Spanish government was quick to blame Eta, the terror organisation blacklisted by both Europe and the USA that has been fighting for a homeland in north-east Spain and south-west France since the 1960s. Authorities believe blame may lie with new, younger, hard-line leadership of the organisation.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said: "It is absolutely clear and evident that the terrorist organisation Eta was looking to commit a major attack ... The only thing different is the train station that was targeted."

Another Madrid station was the target of an earlier failed attack, when explosives packed in luggage on a train headed for Madrid on Christmas Eve failed to go off. The explosive used in yesterday's blasts was titadine, a type of compressed dynamite that the group has used in the past. More explosives were found in the possession of an alleged Eta member, who was said to have intended to put them aboard a train.

But the leader of the banned Basque freedom party Batasuna denied Basque involvement. Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Eta's political wing, now banned, blamed what he called "the Arab resistance".

The attacks were so different from earlier Eta atrocities that doubts were widespread. French police said the blasts had none of the trademarks of Eta. Spanish police said a van they had stopped outside Madrid containing explosives less than two weeks ago also contained Koranic verses.

Whoever was behind it, yesterday morning the centre of one of Europe's most ebullient, pleasure-loving capitals was turned into a battlefield. And when the screaming and the sirens stopped a weird silence fell. Europe's noisiest capital was hushed to a whisper. It was as if the volume of this most vivacious people was suddenly turned to mute.

Madrilenos hurried home, murmured into their mobile phones, crouched over the radios, calling out to each other only the mounting tally of death as the morning wore on.

The city quickly rallied to help the wounded.

"This is our 11 September," said Conchita Esperanza, heading to her job in the Botanical gardens. Appeals for blood donors were answered by a flood of volunteers, and soon queues were snaking through the heart of the city to the mobile units stationed there.

In the 12 de Octubre hospital, the ambulances were streaming into Accident and Emergency. It seemed as though the entire hospital had been turned over to the rescue effort. On the steps outside, groups were huddled together, hugging and weeping.

One young man staggered out, his head and arm bound, his jeans ripped downwards from the hip.

"He doesn't want to talk" his companion said as she propelled him to a waiting car.

A huge amphitheatre in the bowels of the building was turned over as an information centre to for the families. Here I met Jesus Gallego, 40, twirling a bottle of water in his fingers, a huge bandage on his head.

"I'm one of the lucky ones, I only needed six or seven stitches in my head. I'm just waiting for my family to pick me up."

Mr Gallego had been caught by chance on the stricken train from his home town of Alcala de Henares, a train he had never taken before.

"I was on my way to a child cancer conference in Cuidad Real and I was going to take the Ave from Atocha. I was able to get out of the train through a hole in the side. Then I, and many others, turned back into the train to try to help those trapped inside. There was rubble everywhere. Fire fighters arrived within 10 minutes, and after the initial shock and confusion people reacted well."

In the Gregorio Maranon hospital, on the other side of the capital, Virginia Androne, 60, from Romania, lay on a bed in a corridor, her face bruised, her left eye injured and the hearing in her left ear almost gone. She was in the train when the carriage was ripped apart.

"The window fell on top of me. And then there were so many dead. To the left of me and to the right, it was full of dead people. And my husband has no idea where I am. He doesn't know how to find me," Ms Androne said quietly between shallow breaths.

Madrid's normally exuberant bustle, was suspended, stunned into an unprecedented paralysis.

Usually talkative taxi drivers were laconic; even their ritual condemnation of separatist murderers was cut short while we listened to the radio relaying the death toll, the ministerial condemnations, the screams and the sobs, re-spooled endlessly as the hours rolled by.

An exhibition centre in the swanky new business quarter by the airport, a pavilion usually used for EU summits or an international tourism fair, was transformed into a makeshift mass mortuary.

A convoy of more than 50 hearses had made their way there along the motorway and were poised in the adjacent car park, each with their coffin, waiting.

Bodies were brought in from the three devastated railway stations. The families were in a separate room, facing the ordeal of identifying the remains of their mangled loved ones.

An army of social workers and psychological counsellors converged upon those who feared for their loved ones, and fed them water and sandwiches while they waited for news.

- INDEPENDENT