MADRID, Dec 3: Spain has tightened security around public buildings following
the seizure of a series of letter bombs addressed to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez
and others. A total of six parcel bombs have been intercepted in the country
in the past one week. The interior ministry has alerted all the embassies in
the Capital to step up security.
The latest was one sent to the US embassy in Madrid on Thursday and intercepted
at the security post at 12: 30 pm local time. It was detonated in a controlled
environment.
Another one was discovered at the Torrejon air force base early on Thursday.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles also received one.
Some more embassies had received such envelopes on Wednesday. One of them exploded
at the Ukrainian embassy on Wednesday. One employee was injured. Defence Minister
Margarita Robles, who was visiting the Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Thursday
and met her Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov, said the letter bombs would
not deter Spain from supporting Ukraine's "just cause", Reuters reported.
The Prime Minister's office received the letter bomb last week at his official
Moncloa compound on November 24. The security intercepted it and disposed of
it in a controlled explosion. The defence ministry also received suspected explosive
devices hidden in envelopes in mail.
The rocket launchers manufactured by an arms manufacturer who also received
such a letter bomb, interestingly, were some of the weapons Spain had sent to
Ukraine to fight off invading Russians.
The brown letter packages contained flammable powder and tripwire to generate
"sudden flames" rather than explosion. They were all addressed to heads of the
institutions they were sent to and did not appear to have been made an ordinary
individual.
All the mail bombs bore similarities. But some of them appear to have come
from Ukraine, others looked of domestic origin. The Russian invasion of Ukraine
began in February.
