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Tourists watch flames from a car after a bomb exploded outside offices run by the Civil Guard paramilitary police in Palmanova, in the Balearic Island of Mallorca, July 30, 2009. At least two people were killed by a car bomb at a Civil Guard barracks on the Spanish island of Mallorca, officials said on Thursday, a day after a similar attack blamed on Basque separatists ETA in northern Spain. [Agencies]
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King Juan Carlos is vacationing on the island, but there was no indication he was the target or anywhere near the explosion. In 1995, Spanish authorities thwarted a plot to shoot the king with a long-range rifle while he was on vacation in Mallorca.
Wednesday's car bomb attack destroyed a police barracks in the northern city of Burgos and injured about 60 people.
That attack was blamed on the armed Basque separatist group ETA, along with seven other attacks this year.
ETA has killed more than 825 people since it launched a campaign in 1968 for an independent homeland in Basque region of northern Spain.
ETA did not phone in a warning before the Burgos attack as it typically does before most attacks, so authorities had no time to evacuate the 14-story building.
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An investigator stands beside the wreckage of a car in Palmanova, in the Balearic Island of Mallorca, July 30, 2009. [Agencies]
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There were around 120 people in the barracks and surrounding buildings, a third of them children, at the time of the early morning blast.
The interior minister said the van had false license plates and had probably been stolen in France.
Spain has vowed to crush the separatist group since ETA ended what it had said was a permanent cease-fire with a massive bombing at Madrid airport in 2006.
