Agencies  --  Arab News

MADRID, 14 March 2004 — Three Moroccans and two Indians were arrested in Madrid as part of the investigation into the train bombings that killed 200 people, Spain’s Interior Minister Angel Acebes said yesterday.

“Sixty hours after the brutal attack we now have five detainees,” the minister told a news conference.

The five were traced through a mobile phone and phone cards found in a backpack bomb which failed to detonate on one of the trains targeted in Thursday’s attacks.

Two Spaniards of Indian origin were also taken in for questioning by the police, the minister added. “This is an open investigation which is only just starting. At the moment, there is a search going on in various buildings and homes.”

Acebes added: “It’s the beginning of the investigation, but it opens an important path to advance down ... I give you this information with a lot of caution and prudence.”

Acebes said some of those arrested may have links to Moroccan militants, but it was too early to say for sure.

The Spanish radio station Cadena Ser, which is close to the opposition Socialist Party, had earlier quoted sources at the national intelligence agency CNI as saying agents were “99 percent sure” that Al-Qaeda militants, not Basque separatists, were behind the attacks.

The agents believe a 10-15 member cell placed the bombs on the trains and may have fled the country, Cadena Ser said, quoting unnamed sources at the CNI. But CNI director Jorge Dezcallar denied the report, telling the news agency Efe that agents do not favor one line of investigation over another.

The toll from Thursday’s attacks rose to 200 yesterday when one of the injured died in hospital, Spain’s Health Ministry said. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in 2002 have been deadlier.

As a cold drizzle fell on Madrid, what would normally be a day of leisure and reflection before the parliamentary elections instead brought more anguish and mourning. Families started burying and cremating their dead.

Madrid’s biggest funeral home, Tanatorio Sur, was so overcrowded that some coffins were placed in a room normally used for staff meetings. Outside, hearses carried coffins in and out all day.

Investigators were focusing on a stolen white van found in the town of Alcala de Henares outside Madrid hours after the blasts. Police found detonators and an Arabic-language cassette tape with Qur’anic verses inside. Alcala de Henares is the town where three of the four bombed trains originated. The fourth train also stopped there.

A doorman told police he saw three young men carrying knapsacks toward the station in Alcala de Henares, a senior police official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.