Three letter bombs intercepted in Spain

10.00am

MADRID - Three letter bombs addressed to Spanish media organisations were intercepted in Spain on Thursday, three weeks after 191 people were killed in suspected al Qaeda train bombings.

Police explosives experts defused two of the letter bombs and blew up a third after they were detected by a scanner at a mail distribution centre in the northern city of Zaragoza, the Interior Ministry said.

The discovery of the bombs came at a time when Spaniards' nerves remain on edge following the March 11 bombings of four Madrid commuter trains -- the first attack in the West linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network since the September 11, 2001 strikes on New York and Washington.

An Interior Ministry source said authorities did not know who was responsible for the letter bombs, which were addressed to executives at newspaper La Razon, radio station COPE and broadcaster Antena 3.

Armed Basque separatist group ETA has sent letter bombs in the past while anarchist groups have been blamed for others.

The government initially blamed ETA for the March 11 train bombings before evidence grew that militant Islamists were responsible.

The Interior Ministry described the letter bombs as rudimentary devices, each containing about 60 grams of explosive.

The explosives were packed in video storage cases inside a bubble-wrap envelope. They carried a false sender's address in Spain, the ministry said in a statement.

Two parcel bombs were intercepted and defused in Italy on Thursday. They were addressed to senior officials of Italy's prison system, one of them a former anti-Mafia investigator.

Police said they suspected the Italian parcel bombs were the work of anarchists because the return address on one was a fictitious street using the name of a well-known anarchist.

Anarchists are believed to have been behind a spate of parcel bombs in Italy in the past three months. Bombs have been sent to European Union officials, including European Commission President Romano Prodi.

- REUTERS