Madrid — Police found a bomb Friday on a high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
Bomb-disposal experts alerted by a railway employee found 10 to 12 kilograms of explosives, possibly dynamite, under a track about 60 kilometres south of Madrid on the line to the southern city of Seville, Mr. Acebes said.
The explosives were connected to a detonator with a 136-metre cable, the minister told a news conference.
He said it was not immediately known who placed the bomb.
Two Spanish police officers check the rail tracks Friday after a bomb was found on the track of the high speed Madrid-to-Seville train tracks in Mocejon, about 60 kilometres south of Madrid. (Paul White/AP)
"As we get information regarding those possibly responsible or details that move the investigation forward, we will give them to you," he told reporters.
Friday was a busy travel day in Spain, with trains and highways full of people leaving home for Easter vacation.
The armed Basque separatist group ETA has in the past targeted Spanish rail lines.
RENFE said no train was close to the bomb when it was detected.
The line serves mainly Spain's AVE high-speed trains, which have a maximum speed of 300 kilometres per hour, but a smaller number of slower trains also use it, RENFE said.
The discovery of the bomb came less than a month after 10 backpack bombs ripped through four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1,800. The focus of that investigation is a Moroccan extremist group with links to al-Qaeda. The bombs were detonated with cell phones attached to the explosives.
On Thursday, police in northern Spain defused three letter bombs addressed to journalists in Madrid.
Mr. Acebes said the origin of the letters has not been determined, although the mechanism of the explosives is "similar to those that have been used by anarchist groups on previous occasions."
