| Spanish police averted a possible massacre by intercepting a van carrying more than 1,100 pounds of explosives on Sunday that Basque separatist guerrillas ETA planned to detonate in Madrid, the government said. Two suspected ETA members were arrested in the early morning police operation, which came two weeks before a general election and 11 days after ETA declared a partial cease-fire limited to the northeastern region of Catalonia. The men were driving two vans and heading for Madrid when they were stopped in the province of Cuenca, 75 miles southeast of Madrid, officials said. One of the vans contained the explosives which ETA planned to detonate in the Spanish capital "in the coming days," Interior Minister Angel Acebes said, without giving a specific target. It was one of the biggest bombs ETA had attempted to use in recent times, he told a news conference. The van contained 1,116 pounds of chloratite explosive, 66 pounds of dynamite and a timing device, Acebes said. A bomb of that size could have caused a 115-foot crater, serious damage in a 100-yard radius and hurt people one mile away, he said. |