Mallorca bombings

Spanish police officials said they were trying to determine the identities of the people behind the bomb blasts.

The attacks are believed to have been carried out by the Basque separatist group ETA. Only a few clues had emerged on Monday and authorities could not say whether the bombers were still on the island or if there was an ETA terrorist cell on the island itself.

It is also unclear whether Sunday's bombers were the same people responsible for a bomb attack that killed two policemen in July.

Spain's King Juan Carlos has condemned the Mallorca bombings saying the attacks would not succeed in damaging Spain's democracy.

There is speculation that the attacks may have been meant to draw attention to ETA’s cause rather than to harm people because all of the bombs contained low levels of explosives and were detonated after warnings had been given, giving the authorities time to clear people from the blast sites. No injuries were reported.

The first of Sunday's bombings occurred at a restaurant on the outskirts of Palma de Mallorca, near a recreational harbor along the road leading from the city center to the island's airport. The explosive was hidden in a backpack in one of the restaurant's bathrooms.

The second explosion came about two hours later in another restaurant about 500 meters (546 yards) from the first. The third came in a nearby underground supermarket shortly afterwards. The shopping complex had already been sealed off by police.

The origin of a fourth explosion - in a restaurant - was being investigated to find out whether it was a gas explosion or another bomb blast. Overnight police were searching for yet another suspected bomb in a hotel complex in Palma de Mallorca.

Bombings followed ETA claim

The attacks are another blow to the island's tourism industry and came only hours after ETA admitted it was behind bombings that claimed the lives of two Civil Guard officers and a police inspector and injured dozens more in June and July.

The group did not initially claim responsibility for an attack in the Mallorcan resort town of Palmanova on July 30, but confirmed in a statement in the Basque newspaper, Gara, on Sunday that it had been behind the car bombing. The explosion killed two Civil Guard officers who had been driving the vehicle at the time.

ETA also said it was behind a car bombing in the Basque city of Bilbao in June which claimed the life of police inspector Eduardo Puelles Garcia.

The separatists said Garcia had been "the chief of police operations against numerous leftist independence activists and against pro-independence youths for the past decades, and the coordinator of different operations against ETA."

ETA also said it was behind two other attacks, both in July. One was a car bombing outside of a police barracks, which injured more than 40 people; the other an attack on the governing Socialist Party's offices in the Basque town of Durango.

ai/mrm/dpa/AFP
Editor: Chuck Penfold