About 70 000 football fans were forced to evacuate Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium on Sunday night when the police stopped a league game because of a bomb threat purporting to come from the Basque separatist group Eta.
David Beckham, Michael Owen and Real Madrid’s other players were called off the pitch three minutes before the end of the match against Real Sociedad, from the Basque city of San Sabastián, and rushed out of the stadium as loudspeakers told fans to leave immediately.
It took little more than 10 minutes.
No bomb exploded but the police said the threat, just over a week after Eta exploded five small bombs at Madrid petrol stations, was ”credible”.
Late on Sunday night they were still combing the stadium and its surroundings for suspicious bags or packages.
It is the first time a big Spanish sports event has been stopped by a terrorism scare, though Eta exploded a car bomb near the stadium hours before a European Champions League semi-final in May 2002.
Eta and Islamist radicals are reported to have studied the stadium as a target.
A warning call to the Basque separatist newspaper Gara, where Eta normally delivers its bomb warnings, was considered to be believable, Real Madrid executives said on Sunday night.
The decision to evacuate was taken by the director general of police, VÃÂctor GarcÃÂa, who had been watching the match from the directors’ box. Outside, a few fans could be seen in tears but observers remarked on how orderly, calm and rapid the evacuation had been.
Real Madrid players stood in a street near the stadium, still in their football kit, for half an hour while the police searched for bombs, and were then allowed back in to change.
The club chairperson, Florentino Pérez, was reported to have reacted furiously to news of the threat, and later regretted that what he called ”a bad precedent” had been set.
”We have increased security recently and regret very much that this has happened,” a club director, Manuel Cerezo, said.
It was unclear on Sunday night whether the two teams would meet again to play the last few minutes of the match, or leave the score at 1-1. – Guardian Unlimited Â