Madrid bombings: ETA or... Al Qaeda?

[Negative]

Madrid, this morning.
Several bomb explosions kill at least 173 people, and at least 600 people were injured.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet, but two routes are being looked into:

- The ETA: the ETA is a Basque independence-group, politically controlled by the Batasuna party. Batasuna denies all involvement, and points the finger to 'the Arab resistance" (read Al-Qaeda). However, elections in Spain are coming up this weekend, and this could be an ETA-election move. In favor of the ETA though pleas that this attack was huge, even for the ETA.

- Al-Qaeda: Batasuna pointing the finger to Al-Qaeda, Spain's siding with the US in the Iraq-case,...

Update: Spanish police just announced that the type of bombs used is the type of bombs that the ETA tends to use...

[bballad]

My initial thausght would be ETA, but don't they useualy take credit for their bombings?

[Negative]

ETA usually claims responsibility for their bombings, and most of the time even warns about them...

[RoadClosed]

Unless (it seems) the said group know they have struck a serious life threatening blow to the organization. Don't recall Al Quida initialy claiming responsability to all their attacks over the years, especially WTC.

ETC has recently made sever attemps at attacks that were discovered so as mentioned they are likely to be involved and their are elections coming up and this could definitely sway results. Then again the US has reason to site Al Quida involvement being that there is a large population of imagrant Arabs from the Balkins etc.

[Negative]

Meanwhile, the leader of the Basque independence-group has been identified.
Louis XIV: L'étât, c'est moi

That was a joke...

Anyways: 186 people died and still counting, over 1,000 injured.

[nebulus200]

Wow, I would have to think it is ETA, I can't remember a single time that I was in Spain that a bombing didn't happen in Madrid or Barcelona...If the ETA isn't claiming credit for it (maybe due to the death toll they are a little freightened to?), maybe it was a splinter group?

I guess it COULD be Al Queda, Spain was a pretty big supporter of the US in Iraq, so I guess that at least gives the pretext, but I would definitely look towards ETA or someone associated with ETA...

[w0lverine]

Al Qaeda and its fellow organisations never supported Saddam. to them he was a enemy of Islam because he was a socialist and formed a socialist form of Diteratorship in Iraq. Al-Qaeida might be behind this but not for Saddam for sure. They might be protesting for the "American occupation of the islamic soil as they call it".

i think Chances of Al-Queida doing this are remote. ETA would be my first suspect. Al-Queida i think has lost its teeths after the Afganisthan war it would take some time before they can regroup.

[bballad]

Remember there is a large islamic imagrent population in spain now so it could be an al-quida type group. from what i understand some of the imagrant groups want to set up islamic law in europ....One other option is that the ETA has lost some control over its troops...they don't useualy go for death tolls this high if it a new rouge faction that can be very bad.

Oh Wolvereen Al-Quida dose have some teeth left, and have hit some targets in africa and south east asia post afganistan they are just a littel disorganized.

[Negative]

Now this gets interesting... a van has been found. In it: bomb mechanisms, and tapes with excerpts from the Koran. Also, an Arab newspaper in London claims to have received a letter from Al-Qaeda taking responsibility for the attacks...

[bballad]

I guess they are bearing their fangs again.....we may have cut off one head but i think we created a hydra.....if they are going to a distributed managment type of organization this will be very hard to deal with