The US Embassy in Spain also received a bomb letter on Thursday. This makes it the sixth letter bomb in a week in the country. It is still unclear whether the bombs have anything to do with each other. The Spanish police found two other packages last week and are investigating them.
Alarm at Torrejón de Ardoz air base, just outside Madrid, Thursday morning. A scanner detected explosives in an envelope that had arrived by post: a letter bomb, the third in two days. The package was immediately secured and examined, hoping to find out who had sent it.
Thursday afternoon, it turned out that a letter bomb was also intercepted in the American embassy in Madrid. The police confirmed that. The letter was similar to the previous bomb letters sent.
On Wednesday, an employee of the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was slightly injured when a letter bomb also arrived, and he opened it. An envelope containing explosives also came from a weapons factory in Zaragoza. The explosive did not explode there, so no one was injured.
According to Rafael Perez, deputy interior minister, initial indications indicate that all the packages were sent from Spain. “They all appear to have been shipped from within the country, but we are relying on early visual inspections without having an in-depth technical report yet,” he said. He added that the homemade devices were shipped in brown packages containing a flammable powder and trip wire that would cause “sudden flames” rather than an explosion. In addition, the packages were addressed to the heads of the institutions to which they were sent.
Perez confirmed that the package had exploded in the Ukrainian embassy. Three others were detonated in a controlled manner. One package was kept intact for research purposes. It is not yet clear what happened to the package in the American embassy.
The bomb letters caused unrest because who sent them was not yet clear. The first letter, which arrived at the Ukrainian embassy, quickly established a link with the war in Ukraine. That country then decided to increase the security of all its embassies immediately.
“Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuliba has ordered the security of all Ukrainian embassies to be strengthened. He has also called on the Spanish authorities to investigate the attack urgently,” Oleg Nikolenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening.
Two other destinations for the letter bomb could also be related to the war. For example, it is already speculated that the Spanish army and the arms manufacturer were targeted because Spain is one of the European countries supporting Ukraine during Russia’s war. In addition, the base that received a letter bomb on Thursday is also used by NATO. As a result, the Spanish police investigated a possible connection between the letters.
As soon as the news of the new packages arrived, the Spanish police said they were investigating two more similar incidents. A week ago, letter bombs also arrived at the cabinet of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – personally addressed to him – and at the Ministry of Defence. Whether these have anything to do with the other letter bombs remains the question. Nevertheless, the Spanish police say they will increase security in government buildings.