While the letter bomb exploded in the embassy and an embassy employee was slightly injured, the bomb in the weapons factory was detonated in a controlled manner and caused no damage.
In the first incident, an official from the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was injured when he opened a letter bomb addressed to the ambassador.
The letter, which arrived by regular mail and had not been scanned, caused a “very minor wound” to a finger when an official opened it in the garden of the embassy, Mercedes Gonzalez, a Spanish government official, told Telemadrid TV.
Ukrainian worker became suspicious
Ambassador Serhii Pohoreltsev told Ukrainian news site European Pravda that the suspicious package was handed to him by the embassy commander, a Ukrainian staffer.
“The package contained a box that made the commander suspicious, so he decided to take the package out – with no one around – and open it,” Pohoreltsev said.
“After opening the box and hearing a click, he threw it away and then heard the explosion… Although he was not holding the box at the time of the explosion, the commander injured his hands and suffered a concussion. »
Both letters from the same sender
Hours later, a weapons company in Zaragoza, in northeastern Spain, received a similar package, police confirmed. The government representative in Zaragoza, Rosa Serrano, said in an interview with broadcaster SER that the two envelopes appeared to come from the same sender, as the back of both packages had the same email address. Serrano said the packages came from Ukraine, which alerted the weapons company, which then called police.
The arms company is Instalaza, the maker of the C90 missile launcher that Spain is donating to Ukraine.
security measures strengthened
Following the first incident, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba ordered all Kyiv embassies abroad to “urgently” step up security and called on Spain to investigate the attack, a ministry spokesman said.
The Ukrainian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the second incident.
Ambassador Pohoreltsev later told TVE that he worked at the embassy as usual, “without fear”. “We have instructions from the Ukrainian ministry that, given the situation, we must be prepared for any kind of incident… any kind of Russian activity outside the country,” he said.
The Spanish Supreme Court has opened an investigation into the attack as a possible case of terrorism, a judicial source said.
Police carried out a controlled explosion at the factory and the incident caused no damage, the same media reported.
The envelope sent to Zaragoza was 10 x 15 cm, and an X-ray showed the explosive charge with a wireline ready to be activated when the envelope was opened, Serrano said.
Correos, Spain’s state-owned postal service, told Reuters it was cooperating with the investigation.
The residential area around the embassy in northwest Madrid was cordoned off and a bomb disposal squad was sent to the scene, as was the area around the Zaragoza factory.
(SDA)