A car bomb exploded in a car park at Santander airport in northern Spain yesterday after a warning by armed Basque separatist group ETA, police said.
The warning, called to a Basque newspaper, gave authorities time to evacuate and cordon off the car park and police said there were no injuries.
A spokesman for Spanish airport authority AENA said flights to and from Santander had been suspended. "There is extensive material damage," a Santander police spokesman said.
Local media said a plume of smoke was rising from the car park at the airport, which lies on a bay facing Santander. Four or five cars were reported to have caught fire after the explosion.
ETA, branded a terrorist organisation by the US and the EU, has killed more than 800 people in a three-decade campaign for an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France. The bombing at Santander, a busy port and seaside resort, may be part of ETA's traditional summer bombing campaign aimed at undermining Spain's important tourist industry.
Two bomb blasts went off in seaside hotels in Alicante and Benidorm last Tuesday, injuring 13 people, seven of them foreigners, in what the government said appeared to mark the start of an ETA summer campaign.
In summer, Santander is packed with holidaymakers walking along the scenic sea front or through its quaint streets.
The explosion comes two days after Spain's High Court sentenced two ETA members, Santiago Arrospide and Rafael Caride Simon, to 790 years in prison each for their part in ETA's most devastating attack, the June 1987 bombing of a Barcelona supermarket which killed 21 people. Under Spanish law, the pair will serve a maximum of 30 years.
The last week has seen an upsurge in ETA attacks after a lull. Three days after the Alicante and Benidorm blasts, a bomb exploded outside a Spanish courthouse, injuring a man, after a warning from ETA. Two home-made bombs blew up in the troubled Basque country the same day.
ETA sent a letter to European embassies and travel agents this year warning that Spain's lucrative tourist industry would again be a target of its bombs. Hoteliers say they expect no fall-out from the attacks. Spain is the world's second most popular foreign tourist destination after France with 52 million visitors last year. - (Reuters)