Bomb blast in Spain injures French Consul

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 15

Bomb blast in Spain injures French Consul

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) ZARAGOZA (Spain), November 3. The Spanish police have begun an intensive search for two youths and a girl who exploded a bomb in the French Consulate in Zaragoza and seriously injured the French Consul, who had been tied up inside the building.

The Consul, Mr Roger Tur, aged 67, was pulled from his room with his clothing in flames, and crying repeatedly: “Pourquoi moi?”

He was taken to hospital with third-degree burns covering his entire body, and early today doctors said that his condition was serious. At first it was believed that the assailants were Basque separatists, but after yesterday’s attack, leaflets signed by a group calling themselves the Collective of the Hammer and Sickle appeared on the local university campus, claiming responsibility for the attack. The group, not heard of previously in Spain, said in the leaflets that the attack was in reprisal for France’s attitude towards Spanish Basque exiles in south-west France. Mr Tur’s Spanish secretary,

Miss Maria Luisa Marqueta, who was slightly injured in the blast, told neighbours who dashed to the burning consulate after the explosion that the attackers had identified themselves as members of the outlawed Basque separatist organisation, E.T.A. (Basque Nation and Liberty). The consul and his secretary were tied with electric cable, the offices were daubed with red paint, and shortly after the attackers left there was an explosion. The attack on the consulate, which is at least 100 miles from Basque territory where E.T.A. activists usually carry out their raids, coincided with the imprisonment

yesterday of a prominent Basque nationalist leader in south-west France. Julan de Madariaga, aged 39, a Spanish-born Chilean, received a three-month sentence in Bayonne for secretly entering France after being expelled several months ago. He is considered in France as a leading figure in the extreme Left-wing arm of the Basque nationalist movement, and has served several years in Spanish prisons for political activities. E.T.A. leaders in Spain have been angered by what they say is increasing action by the French authorities to break their sanctuaries across the Pyrenees.