Two bombs exploded at hotels in the Spanish coastal resorts of Benidorm and Alicante today, injuring several people, after Basque separatist group ETA warned of attacks, officials said.
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Emergency workers inpect the blast site outside the Hotel Bahia following an explosion in Alicante on Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast today.
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The blasts were at the Nadal hotel on the Levante beach in Benidorm and at the Hotel Residencia Bahia in central Alicante.
The blasts appeared to mark the beginning of another summer bombing campaign by ETA, which in recent years has targeted Spain's key tourist sector.
"It appears that in the Hotel Bahia [in Alicante] there were four wounded, not in a serious condition because the hotel had been evacuated," said Mr Juan Cotino, the central government's representative in the Valencia region.
"In Benidorm, it appears there were four police slightly injured," he added.
At a joint news conference with the Taoiseach Mr Bertie Ahern, who is on a one-day visit to the country, Spanish Prime Minister Mr Jose Maria Aznar said:
"It's obvious that this is about trying to introduce what we could call the annual quota of fear in Spaniards' summer break, which every year they try to do."
Local television images showed smoke rising from the seafront hotel in Alicante, which had previously been cordoned off after receiving the ETA warning.
Police earlier confirmed ETA had said in a warning to a Basque nationalist newspaper that it had planted bombs in the two hotels in the major tourist centres on Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast.
The warning, delivered at 10 a.m. Irish time, had said the devices would explode at 11.30 a.m..
"It exploded 20 minutes earlier than expected," said a spokeswoman for the Benidorm mayor's office.
ETA, western Europe's most active guerrilla force, has killed 841 people since 1968 in a bombing and shooting campaign for an independent state in northern Spain and southwestern France.