March 11, 2004
The train bombing in Spain may not be the work of Basque separatists after all:
A letter purporting to come from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for train bombings in Spain on Thursday, calling them strikes against "crusaders," a London-based Arabic newspaper said.
It appears that there is other evidence pointing towards Islamic radicals:
Spain's interior minister said a suspect van had been found on Thursday near Madrid, scene of bombings that killed 190 people, containing seven detonators and a tape in Arabic language.
The death count is up to 190, with an additional 1247 injured. Here is an impressive statement by Spain's ambassador to the United States:
"This is our own 9-11, and I am sure we are going to react very much the way the Americans did when they had that terrible suffering of theirs," the ambassador Francisco Javier Ruperez told CNN television.
To me, this demonstrates two things:
- This attack was not on U.S. soil and was not directed against U.S. citizens. This seems to indicate that increased security measures coupled with the war on terror have been successful in reducing terrorism on the domestic front.
- The war on terror is not over. It is significant that this attack was directed against an ally of the United States. It is also significant that this attack took place in Europe. Perhaps now the unconvinced European nations will begin to understand the threat to civilization that terrorism poses.
