Madrid

'So many bodies ... Our country has never seen this'

MADRID - Dr. Eduardo Asensio, a rescue worker, has waded in death for two decades, but none of it prepared him for the torment he saw at the height of rush hour on Thursday morning.

"I've been through so many other catastrophes, but not this, not this," Asensio said, still in his blood-stained white medical uniform outside the Atocha railway station. "So many bodies, all along the railway lines. Dead. Our country has never seen this."

Chaos spread like a contagion, accompanied by the screams of ambulance sirens and the roar of police helicopters. People fleeing the trains trampled one another.

Cell phones rang near dead bodies as people struggled to call relatives. Weeping family members searching for relatives staked out emergency rooms that strained to cope.

There were tales of close calls and miraculous escapes. One student said he thought he was saved because he was bent over a book when the blast hit the train he was riding in.

"I saw a backpack, and said to the others it looked suspicious," said Luis Miguel Hernandez, speaking on the Spanish TV station Antena 3 about finding one of the packs that did not explode. "The others screamed: "Don't touch it! Don't grab it! It's a trap!"'

In 71/2 years as a technician on an emergency services ambulance, Jonathan Cuenca has seen death and destruction - but never anything on this scale.

"Lots of people in pieces, bleeding," Cuenca said, leaning exhausted on the door of his emergency vehicle. "After the first explosion, everybody was running over the people who were injured but not dead. It was a stampede."

As bodies streamed into makeshift morgues at a convention pavilion and people lined up to donate blood, King Juan Carlos urged calm.

"We are a great country that has demonstrated its capacity to overcome challenges and difficulties," he said in a recorded TV appearance aired Thursday night. "The only appropriate response is unity, firmness and serenity."

But some Spaniards preferred vengeance. "What happened this morning can't happen again," said Cristina Ranz Ortega, a secretary, who traveled 45 minutes to the makeshift morgue, looking to volunteer. "We want an eye for an eye. Other people are tolerant but not me."

Spain is used to the tremors of terrorism. For decades, the Basque separatist group ETA has set off bombs, most of them small and most of them aimed at authority figures, such as police and politicians. But when terrorists blew up commuter trains packed with run-of-the-mill people suddenly the equation changed.

The indiscriminate nature of the attack, the scale of the destruction and the element of surprise left the country struggling to understand how such well-coordinated attacks could have happened in the city's capital and whether Spain would ever stop looking over its shoulder again. The absence of evidence about who was responsible - ETA or perhaps an Islamic militant group - only heightened the country's confusion and vulnerability.

"It's an act of complete hatred toward the people," said Fernando Escobar, a 39-year-old ambulance worker. "An entire car blew up and sent pieces of bodies flying."

Some people tried to go about their business, defiant in the face of violence. But at midday, an eerie calm descended on a city that normally screams with noise and traffic. Shops and newspaper vendors were open for business, but the main streets had the feel of a slow Sunday afternoon.

Except for small pockets of foreign tourists, the current exhibition of still lifes by the 18th century Spanish painter Luis Menendez at the Prado Museum was largely empty.

Late Thursday, the cellular phone system became clogged from overuse, and customers were asked to refrain from making all but the emergency calls.

At 10 p.m. the Plaza Mayor, Madrid's most famous square, was silent but for a handful of camera-carrying tourists.

Some of those who were out Thursday said they were taking a stand. Antonio Hidalgo, 39, a waiter at Jose Luis, said: "If you're afraid, the terrorists win." He said he wouldn't think twice about using the trains. "If you let fear get the best of you, you don't leave the house."

The government called for three days of mourning, and for a huge demonstration tonight against violence and in support of Spain's constitution. By nightfall, several impromptu protests and vigils had begun around the city. At a circle near the Atocha station, young people taped sheets of paper to the side of an office building and began writing slogans against violence and against ETA.

"Enough," one said.

- Information from the New York Times and Washington Post was used in this report.

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