State Funeral For Train Victims

The Spanish royal family wept Wednesday as they comforted row after row of mourners, clasping hands and kissing cheeks at Wednesday's state funeral for the 190 people killed in the country's worst terrorist attack ever.

On a cold, overcast day, King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and the rest of the royal family joined French President Jacques Chirac, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and more than a dozen other heads of state or government in the 19th century Almudena Cathedral.

"We have cried, and we have cried together," Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, clad in purple vestments, told the congregation of about 1,500.

The March 11 attacks traumatized Spain so deeply that the government took the extraordinary step of holding a state funeral for people outside the royal family.

The organist played the Spanish national anthem as the royal family entered the granite cathedral in Madrid's old quarter. Later, incense wafted through the air as a choir clad in blue gowns sang mournful hymns.

The royal family sat up front during the Mass, with the Spanish government and other politicians immediately behind, including Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his successor, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Foreign dignitaries sat on the left side of the aisle.

"Great pain has filled your lives and those of your families since that black day in which brutal terrorist violence, planned and executed with unspeakable cruelty, ended the lives of your most beloved," Rouco Varela said.

"From the very first moment — that of the anguished search and the inevitable identification of your loved ones — your pain became the pain of our dear city of Madrid, of Spain, and very quickly, of the whole world," he added.

Before the Mass began, one unidentified man in the congregation shouted, "Mr. Aznar, I hold you responsible for the death of my son!"

Many Spaniards have accused Aznar of provoking the bombings by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and his party lost the national election three days after the attacks to Zapatero's Socialists.

Zapatero has pledged to withdraw the estimated 1,300 Spanish troops now serving along with other international forces in Iraq unless the United Nations takes control of the operations. The daily El Pais reported that he intends to increase Spain's 125 troops in Afghanistan to offset criticism of his decision to withdraw from Iraq.

As the Mass ended, the king and queen and other members of the royal family went from row to row, clasping the hands of the bereaved or kissing them on the cheek. The queen struggled to hold back tears. One of her two daughters, Princess Cristina, and husband Inaki Urdangarin, cried uncontrollably as they made the same sad procession.

Neither Aznar nor anyone in his government went to see grieving relatives at the funeral.

Spanish national television broadcast the service, along with an on-screen list of the names of all 190 bombing victims.

Crowds of several hundred people gathered before giant-screen TVs broadcasting the funeral in a cobblestone courtyard outside the cathedral, in a Royal Palace garden and in the Puerta del Sol — a bustling plaza where one of several makeshift memorials to the victims sprang up the day after the bombings.

Spaniards have suffered from terrorism before — militant Basque separatists have launched attacks over the decades, with the highest death toll being 21 in 1987.

But the March 11 rail attacks, in which Islamic extremists are the prime suspects, have dwarfed that figure. Besides the dead, more than 1,800 people were injured when 10 bombs concealed in backpacks ripped through four crowded commuter trains during the morning rush hour.

The downtown cathedral was cordoned off for a radius of 500 yards (meters). Police also stepped up security at Madrid's two airports, roads leading into the city and along the motorcade route to the cathedral.

It was the first state funeral for people outside the royal family in the history of Spain's new democracy, restored after longtime dictator Gen. Francisco Franco died in 1975. The last state funeral was held in 2000 for the king's mother, Mercedes de Borbon y Orleans.

The attacks were the worst to target a Western country since the suicide airliner attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. The deadliest since then was the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, which was blamed on an al-Qaida-linked group and killed 202 people.

Suspicion for the train bombings has focused on an alleged Morocco-based terrorist cell believed to have links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and on al-Qaida itself.

Spanish police have identified five of eight people they suspect carried out the Madrid bombings, including the alleged cell leader, news reports said Wednesday.

Citing unidentified police sources, El Mundo said police had issued arrest orders for three of the five while the other two — thought to be Jamal Zougam and Abderrahim Zbakh — are already jailed on charges of mass murder.

The Periodico de Catalunya daily said Zougam's fingerprints were found in a confiscated van that was discovered just hours after the bombings near a train station outside Madrid. Detonators and a cassette tape of verses from the Quran were found in the van.

Police declined to comment on the reports.

Authorities have arrested 15 suspects in connection with the bombings — 11 Moroccans, two Indians, one Algerian and a Spaniard. Thirteen remain in custody, of whom 11 have been charged and jailed pending further investigation. The latest were charged Wednesday evening — two Moroccans, one of them the first woman to be arrested.

One Moroccan and the Algerian have been released.