Barcelona newspaper office hit by bomb

Two Spanish police officers were slightly injured yesterday when three armed attackers claiming to represent Grapo, an obscure Marxist organisation, set off a bomb in a Barcelona newspaper office.

Two Spanish police officers were slightly injured yesterday when three armed attackers claiming to represent Grapo, an obscure Marxist organisation, set off a bomb in a Barcelona newspaper office.

The hooded gang burst into the offices of the daily El Mundo and planted a bomb in a waste paper basket that exploded minutes later, said one of the newspaper's reporters. He said two women and a man held a security guard at gunpoint as they rushed into the building and warned staff to leave before the explosion.

The gang told the staff they were members of Grapo, which stands for the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group.

A government spokesman in Barcelona said the two police officers suffered only slight injuries. Inaki Gil, a deputy editor at El Mundo, said the newspaper's offices had been evacuated by the time the time the bomb went off.

"We have not received any warnings from Grapo, nor from any other terrorist group," he said on the Spanish CNN television channel. He added: "It's hard to imagine what goes on in the minds of these people. There can be no explanation for this kind of thing."

Grapo was mostly active in the late 1970s during the 36-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The group was blamed for dozens of killings in its campaign to create a Marxist state at that time. ( Reuters)