Santander, Wednesday
Dozens of bathers were ordered off a beach in northern Spain and local residents evacuated today after tourists found loaded grenade launchers set to target a nearby police barracks.
Civil Guard police officers used loud hailers to urge people to leave the Comillas beach, a nearby parking lot and to evacuate apartments around the barracks, according to a police statement.
An anonymous call to the pro-Basque Radio station in the neighbouring Basque region said the grenades had been planted by the armed Basque separatist group Eta but had failed to go off on time.
Barracks of the paramilitary Civil Guard have regularly been attacked by Eta as part of its campaign for Basque independence.
Comillas is located 215 miles north of Madrid in the region of Cantabria, next to the Basque region.
The three grenade launchers were spotted by two tourists in bushes some 50 yards from the barracks and 100 yards from beach.
Eta, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, has killed nearly 800 people, mostly security force members, since it began fighting.
qIn the south of the country seven Spanish pensioners, five of them women, were killed and 41 others injured today when their coach plunged off a motorway down an embankment and overturned near Almeria, at the eastern end of the Costa del Sol. Eight of the injured were later said to be in a serious condition.
The coach was taking the old folk to the resort of La Manga from their homes in Almeria. No other vehicle was involved and the cause of the accident was not known.
On Monday six people were killed when a bus on a scheduled run crashed just north of Madrid.
In the past few weeks, 26 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in six coach crashes in Spain. - AP.
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