A day after a letter bomb exploded at the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid injuring one employee, Spain’s interior and defense ministries said early Thursday that Spanish police are investigating a suspicious letter bomb sent to an air base outside Madrid.
Spanish security forces found an explosive device hidden in a mailed parcel sent to the Satellite Center of the air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz, outside Madrid – the military section of the Madrid–Torrejon Airport serving the capital.
Spain’s defense ministry said the package was found during screening at the air base and contained a suspect mechanism. No injuries or damage were reported on-site, but extra security forces were deployed to the base
A short time afterward, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported that additional two packages with incendiary devices were detected, one addressed to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez and the second one addressed to the Spanish Ministry of Defense.
Spanish National Police has informed that the suspicious envelope with pyrotechnic material addressed to Sánchez and sent as an ordinary postal item, was detected, and neutralized by the security services.
Previously on Wednesday, one employee at Ukraine’s embassy in Madrid sustained non-serious injuries in the explosion that occurred while was handling a letter – an apparent bomb concealed inside an envelope – addressed to Kyiv’s ambassador to Spain, Serhil Pohoreltsev.
According to unidentified police sources, the letter contained a homemade explosive.
In the aftermath of the incident, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba asked his Spanish counterpart to take urgent measures to investigate the attack while ordering the strengthening of the security of all Ukrainian embassies.
Spanish National Police has already placed extra security at the embassy whereas Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, is investigating the blast as a terrorist act.
Later the same day, a separate letter bomb was deactivated at a weapons manufacturer Instalaza in the northern Spanish city of Zaragoza which manufactures rocket launchers that Spain has sent to Ukraine to fight against Russia’s invasion.
According to Rosa Serrano, the top Spanish government official in the Aragon region where the second bomb arrived, an executive at the factory was apparently aware of the explosion in Madrid earlier in the day so he called the police when an envelope arrived soon after that no one seemed to recognize.
The bomb squad that arrived immediately established a security perimeter after the police determined the envelope contains explosives designed to explode upon opening and deactivated the parcel in a controlled explosion.
Serrano said that both the letter bomb at the embassy and the one that arrived in Zaragoza apparently had the same email address written as the sender and that both apparently came from Ukraine, without giving further details.
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