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Spain said on Thursday it was boosting security measures following the discovery of a series of letter bombs in the country, including one sent last week to Spain’s prime minister and another to the US embassy.
The sixth and latest bomb was discovered on Thursday afternoon and sent to the US Embassy in Madrid. A police source told CNN that he was apprehended at the embassy’s security checkpoint around 12:30 p.m. local time.
According to two US officials, the envelope was detonated in a controlled atmosphere. Officials said no one was injured in the process.
“We are grateful to Spanish law enforcement for their assistance in this matter,” Jamie Martin, a spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Madrid, told CNN.
A US official said security at the embassy was increased after suspicious packages were sent to other embassies on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the US State Department said it “will continue to evaluate the security situation and provide updates as appropriate. The US Embassy in Madrid remains open to US civilian services. We thank Spanish law enforcement for their assistance.”
A previous bomb sent to an air force base near Madrid was discovered before dawn on Thursday, one after the other. explosion On Wednesday, the Ukrainian embassy in the capital and another at an arms manufacturer were defused.
A device addressed to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez arrived at the post at his official Moncloa compound on 24 November and his security detail described it as suspicious. An Interior Ministry statement said that after setting up a security perimeter, they conducted a “controlled detonation” of the envelope.
The bomb “will be identical for its characteristics and contents” to those received on Wednesday at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid and at arms manufacturer Instalza in Zaragoza and on Thursday at Spain’s Torrejon air force base near Madrid, the statement said.
The most recent letter bomb was intercepted just before dawn Thursday after being sent to Torrejon Air Force Base.
Spanish Defense Ministry officials said a scanner at the base detected a suspicious envelope. A statement said the scans indicated there could be “some sort of mechanism” inside the envelope. Police were called to the base to analyze the envelope, which was addressed to the Satellite Center at the air base.
Spain’s defense ministry also received a letter bomb addressed to Defense Minister Margarita Robles, Secretary of State for Security Rafael Perez said on Thursday.
Perez said that the letters were likely sent from Spanish territory, and that in four of the five cases, security measures worked successfully to neutralize the bombs.
People should remain “calm”, the minister said, and there was no reason to justify raising the terrorist threat.
The latest development comes after the discovery of two letter bombs on Wednesday. Spanish officials said the first blast hit the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid in the afternoon, injuring an employee.
Spain’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the envelope, addressed to Ukraine’s ambassador to Spain, exploded after being handled by a Ukrainian worker at the embassy. Later in the evening, police defused a letter bomb near an arms manufacturer in northern Spain, a senior Spanish official said.
In an interview with Spain’s radio station SER on Wednesday, official Rosa Serrano said the return envelope sent to the gunmaker had the same return address as the one that exploded the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid.
“The return address on the envelope is an email that is the same on both envelopes”, said Serrano, who is the top Spanish government official in the Aragon region where the second letter bomb was delivered.
The envelope from the arms maker in the city of Zaragoza in Aragon, Serrano said, “apparently came from Ukraine,” adding that officials suspect the one at the embassy may also have come from Ukraine.
Serrano said that an executive of the arms manufacturer apparently knew about the Madrid explosion, so when an envelope arrived shortly thereafter with no identification, the company called the police.
The bomb disposal squad arrived and police determined that inside the envelope were explosives, designed to detonate when opened. It had been disabled, Serrano said.
Serrano did not identify the firm, but Spanish media named it and said it manufactured rocket launchers Spain sent to Ukraine during the war. invasion of russia, CNN could not immediately confirm that detail.
“I know that the firm has been a weapons manufacturer for a long time with state-of-the-art facilities,” Serrano said in the radio interview.
The statement said police informed Spain’s National Court of Terrorism about each letter bomb.
The Interior Ministry has ordered increased security measures at all embassies and consulates in Spain, as well as other sites requiring special protection. Security had been increased since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.