Eta bomb explodes at tourist restaurant

An ETA bomb exploded yesterday lunchtime at a hamburger restaurant in the Spanish resort of Torrevieja on the Costa Blanca, causing extensive damage but no injuries.

An ETA bomb exploded yesterday lunchtime at a hamburger restaurant in the Spanish resort of Torrevieja on the Costa Blanca, causing extensive damage but no injuries.

Police received a telephone warning an hour before the blast from the Basque separatist organisation that two bombs had been planted in the Alicante area. The alert gave them time to move holidaymakers to safety. Shortly afterwards, police deactivated another bomb on the roof of a nightclub near Santa Pola beach, popular with British holidaymakers.

The attack, at the peak of the tourist season, follows a bomb explosion outside a police barracks in Santa Pola on Sunday night in which a six-year-old girl and a man died. Unusually, the bombers gave no warning.

The blasts are seen as the latest in the summer terrorist campaign intended, as in previous years, to scare holidaymakers away from the costas and damage the Spanish economy which is heavily dependent on tourism.