A video found by police in the apartment where members of the radical Islamist group behind the Madrid train bombings blew themselves up appeared to confirm they had been planning fresh attacks.
The video gave Spain a deadline of a week to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and showed that the bombers were preparing to fight to the death, according to an interior ministry translation made public on Thursday.
In the video, three heavily armed people read a statement in the name of the Al Mufti Brigades and Ansar al-Qaeda giving Spain one week ”to leave Muslim lands”.
”Should you not do this within the space of a week, starting today, we will con tinue our jihad until martyrdom,” it said. ”You are not safe and you know that Bush and his administration will bring only destruction. We will kill you anywhere and in any manner.”
Police were unable to say when the video was filmed but speculated it could have been made last Saturday, the day they blew themselves up.
Investigators had already concluded that the group, which tried to bomb a rail line from Madrid to Seville last week, had wanted to carry out fresh attacks over Easter.
The bombers said they were ready to achieve ”martyrdom in the land of Tarek Ben Ziyad” — a reference to the Moorish leader who, early in the eighth century, led an invasion of Spain that heralded the start of seven centuries of Muslim presence in the country.
The tape, which had been badly damaged in the suicide blast, was similar to one sent three days after the March 11 train attacks that killed more than 190 people.
The first tape had been made in the name of someone called Abu Dujan al-Afghani, who claimed to be Ansar al-Qaeda’s European leader.
El Mundo newspaper on Thursday quoted unnamed police sources saying that the bombers had this week planned to attack the vast Parquesur shopping centre in the Madrid dormitory town of Leganés, just half a mile from the apartment where they blew themselves up.
The bombers also reportedly tried to attack a high-speed train from Madrid to Zaragoza last Saturday with two bombs that were found in the rubble of the apartment.
However, police believe they abandoned the attempt because they thought they had been spotted, returning to the apartment in Leganés which had become their centre of operations, according to the ABC newspaper.
Police said DNA results showed seven bombers probably died in the suicide blast, but they were still looking for six men and another safe house in or around Madrid.
They believe the few cell members still on the run do not have access to more explosives, El Mundo said. One of those on the run could be Amer Aziz, whose name had already featured in an investigation by Judge Baltasar Garzón into Spanish links to the September 11 attacks on the US.
El PaÃÂs newspaper reported on Thursday that police, acting on a tip-off from neighbours, visited a country house 64km from the capital which had served as a bomb factory just four days before the March 11 attacks.
Lacking a court order, they did not enter the house, and instead noted the licence plates of cars parked outside.
This weekend Spain marks Easter with religious processions across the country. Fearing more attacks during the holy week, the government has ordered unprecedented security measures, sending 1 500 soldiers to guard railway lines, nuclear power plants, reservoirs and other potential targets.
French police evacuated thousands of passengers from the Paris urban rail network on Thursday in a bomb alert that followed a tip-off by a CIA agent in Spain. – Guardian Unlimited Â