Benidorm Bomb Launches Eta’s Summer Campaign · Costa Del Sol Fuengirola Info

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Six foreign tourists, one British, were among 12 people injured yesterday by bombs planted by the Basque separatist group Eta in hotels in the Spanish resorts of Benidorm and Alicante.

The attacks are thought to be the beginning of another summer bombing campaign.

One of those injured by the bomb at the Hotel Bahia in Alicante, believed to be a Dutch student, was reported to be in a coma last night.

A second student, a 24-year-old German who suffered serious head injuries, was described as being out of danger after surgery.

The bomb, left in a suitcase in a room in the Bahia, caught a group on students from various European countries at the nearby Sampere language school. Unlike the hotel, the school had not been evacuated.

Ellie Carr, 20, from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, said: “I was in the middle of a Spanish lesson when there was this massive explosion and the whole building fell in around us.”

In hospital after receiving 20 stitches to her injuries, she added: “Before I knew it, I was covered in blood. I couldn’t get down the stairs. I couldn’t feel my head, but eventually I found a fire exit and ran outside.”

Russian and Swedish students were among those reported injured.

Nobody was hurt at the provincial headquarters of the People’s party, next door to the hotel.

The second blast, in the Hotel Nadal in Benidorm, was seen by thousands of tourists. It injured four police bomb-disposal experts.

The interior minister, Angel Acebes, said it was a trap. The hotel was evacuated after a telephone warning was given to a Basque newspaper, but the bomb exploded 20 minutes earlier than the time Eta had said.

One of those who saw it was mayor of Belfast, Martin Morgan. “I had just gone down to a chemist at the rear of the Hotel Nadal when the bomb detonated,” he said. “There was a huge bang followed by clouds of smoke … you could smell the sulphur and you just knew it was a bomb.

“There was no real sense that there was a bomb scare before the blast. It just seemed to come out of the blue.”

The police confirmed that Eta members had booked into the room where the bomb was left two days earlier.

Last summer Eta bombed a police barracks along the coast at Santa Pola, killing two passersby, including a girl of six.

It also planted bombs in nearby Torrevieja and the southern Costa del Sol resorts of Fuengirola, Marbella and Mijas. No one was killed.

Eta has carried out periodic campaigns against tourism targets, generally without killing anyone, since 1979 in an attempt to damage one of Spain’s main industries. But in the past 18 months eight people have died in its bomb and shooting attacks on tourist targets.

More than 200 suspected members have been arrested in that time, including 10 picked up at the weekend by the Mexican police.

“Sadly, we seem to get two or three devices going off each summer in Spanish tourist areas,” the Association of British Travel Agents said.

“British tourists do not seem to be put off by these incidents, but we would urge people to be careful and to heed any advice they are given.”

The Foreign Office confirmed that it had received warnings from Eta that it would target tourists, and had reflected them in its travel advice.

“Our response to Eta’s attacks must be the same: serenity and firmness,” the Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, said.

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