AP News, January 1st, 2007
An Ecuadorean teenager endured a horrific brush with death in an explosion that left her boyfriend and another man missing and feared dead in a car bombing blamed on Basque separatists, an Ecuadorean immigrant association said Monday.
Saturday's powerful explosion at a five-story parking lot at Madrid's international airport left 26 people injured and shattered a nine-month cease-fire that the armed Basque group ETA had said was permanent.
ETA did not claim responsibility for the bombing. But a man who placed a warning call before the attack said he was a representative of the group. Following previous attacks, the group has sometimes waited weeks to claim responsibility.
The government responded by halting plans for negotiations with ETA.
Firefighters and other crews worked through the night to remove tons of concrete and other rubble as they searched for the missing men, identified as Diego Armando Estacio, 19, and Carlos Alonso Palate, 35, who was in another car. Both are from Ecuador but live in Spain.
The attack has left Spain's Ecuadorean community in a state of shock and mourning. It is Spain's largest immigrant group, with an estimated 500,000 here legally and many more believed to be in Spain without residency papers.
Estacio and his girlfriend, Veronica Arequipa, also 19, had gone to the airport early Saturday morning to pick up Arequipa's sister and her daughter, who were arriving on a flight from Ecuador.
The young couple had been at a nightclub beforehand and Estacio remained in the car to sleep while Arequipa went into gleaming new Terminal 4 to collect her sister, said Joffre Pinzon, an official of the Federation of Ecuadoreans in Spain.
Pinzon heard Arequipa's account of the tragedy at a meeting Sunday between federation officials and her and other relatives and associates of the missing men.
Just as Arequipa and her sister left the terminal to walk toward the parking lot, the massive bomb exploded, throwing them to the ground.
"It happened right in front of them," Pinzon said.
Pinzon said he was at the airport Sunday and told by firefighters there was virtually no chance Estacio and Palate are alive. As late as Sunday afternoon, 36 hours after the blast, the site was still smoking.
"It is like an accordion, with everything collapsed," Pinzon said.
