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13 November 2007
BILBAO – A police officer inspecting two bombs planted by the ETA terrorist group in the Basque Country on Sunday suffered serious injuries to his hands yesterday when a detonator on one of the devices exploded.
A bomb expert from the Basque regional police force, known as the Ertzaintza, lost four fingers on his right hand and lost the tips of three fingers on his left in the blast which occurred inside the Explosives Deactivation Unit of a police station in Iurreta. The detonator had been attached to one of the two bombs claimed by ETA that police deactivated on Sunday outside a court house in the town of Getxo.
Composed of five and three kilos of explosives each, the bombs had been intended to “cause a massacre,” Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said in a press conference yesterday.
Police managed to cordon off the area and deactivate the devices before they could explode.
The injured officer was recovering in hospital last night and doctors described his condition as stable. A second officer who suffered injuries to his face and damaged hearing in the blast was treated and discharged.
[Copyright EL PAÍS, SL. 2007]
Subject: Spanish news