Spanish government accused the Basque separatist group ETA of trying to kill women and children yesterday in a car bombing outside a police barracks in northern Spain which wounded more than 60 people.
About 120 people, one-third of them children, were sleeping inside the barracks in Burgos when the bomb went off at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT), blowing off most of its façade, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.
The blast left a big crater in the street outside the barracks which filled with water from broken pipes while the walls of several rooms were blasted off with damage visible up to the 14th floor of the building.
Mr Rubalcaba charged that ETA was "undoubtedly trying to kill" people with the blast as it had not issued any prior warning as it often does when it strikes. "It was not just aimed at those working in the Civil Guards but also at their families, which makes this particularly despicable. Forty-one children could have been killed," he said at the scene of the bombing.
"When we deal with ETA we know we are dealing with murderers and savages and now we know that they are also crazed. This does not make them stronger, but it does make them more dangerous," he added.
Of the 64 people who were injured, 49 required hospital care, mostly for cuts from broken glass and bruises, and have already been released, the director of the regional health service, Francisco Javier Guisasola, told a news conference.
Police earlier said at least 22 women and six children were slightly injured in the blast.
ETA, considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, has frequently targeted the Civil Guard in its 41-year campaign to carve a Basque homeland out of northern Spain and southwestern France.
The latest attack came just two days before the 50th anniversary of ETA's founding, on July 31, 1959, by nationalist students inspired by Marxist-Leninist teachings, at a time when Spain was still run by rightwing dictator Francisco Franco.
The group carried out its first planned killing on August 2, 1968 with the shooting of a policeman. It is blamed for the deaths of 825 people.
Spanish public television last month said a new road map of strategic plans by ETA reaffirmed its commitment to violence to achieve its aims.
"The terrorists believe that Basque independence is their irreversible goal. Only then will ETA no longer kill," TVE said, quoting a document that it said outlined the group's strategy put together over the past three years.