SPAIN:Spain has stepped up security in its north African enclaves and southern coastal towns to counter the risk of Islamist attacks following suicide bombings in Algeria and Morocco, Spanish newspapers said yesterday.
Al-Qaeda has said it wants to re-establish Islamic rule in parts of Spain and Portugal and police have raised security in sensitive border areas which may have links to radical Islamists, El Pais reported, citing police sources.
The Spanish government said it remained on the level of alert it had been on since March 11th, 2004, when Islamist radicals bombed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people.
Recent al-Qaeda communiques refer to the reconquest of areas of the Iberian peninsula governed at various times by Muslims for eight centuries until their defeat in 1492 by Christian forces.
Spain's north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are among the most sensitive areas, Spanish authorities say. Police in December arrested 11 suspected Islamic militants in Ceuta. Two men were held in Melilla the previous month on suspicions of having carried out bombings in Casablanca in 2003. Tens of thousands of people cross from Morocco into Ceuta and Melilla every day and monitoring them is difficult.
Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon said on Thursday the country's north African enclaves were among al-Qaeda's next targets.
Spain is holding Europe's biggest terrorism trial of 29 Islamists accused of the Madrid bombings. Many of them are suspected of coming from Spain's Arab immigrant community, dominated by more than half a million Moroccans who are Spain's largest immigrant group by country.