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ETA Bomb Threat on Med Coast |
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Spanish police have called off their search for a bomb on beaches near the Mediterranean resort of San Carlos de la Rapita on Wednesday and believe the incident was a false alarm.
The measures were taken after an anonymous call to the Basque newspaper Gara from someone claiming affiliation with the Basque separatist organisation ETA. Gara is regularly used by ETA as a channel for warnings and claims, police said.
"It is a false alarm, the search is over," police said. An inquiry is now under way into whether the claim was genuine.
The caller said that a bomb would explode in the early afternoon on Wednesday on a beach near San Carlos de la Rapita, about 140 kilometres south-west of Barcelona.
About 2,000 tourists, many of them foreigners, were evacuated from the beaches of the town, which normally has a population of 16,000 though that triples in summer.
On Saturday ETA carried out its first bombing since mid-2003 in the seaside tourist village of San Vicente de la Barquera on northern Spain's Atlantic coast. No one was hurt in the blast.
Britain's travel industry warned the country's holiday makers in Spain to be on their guard after the San Carlos evacuation.
"We urge everyone to be vigilant," said Keith Betten, corporate affairs head of the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA). "The travel industry has to take security threats seriously." |
