MADRID, March 11 (UPI) -- Spain held a solemn observation Friday on the anniversary of the Madrid train bombings that killed nearly 200 people.
Marking the hour (7:37 AM local time) of the explosions, church bells rang throughout the capital, according to El Mundo's online edition, while mourners laid flowers near the station where the bombs went off.
The March 11, 2004, bombing killed 191 people three days before elections, prompting an upset of the ruling right-wing Popular Party by socialist leader-turned-Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who campaigned on a promise to pull Spanish troops from Iraq.
Initially investigators thought the attack was perpetrated by Basque separatists, though a Moroccan group with ties to al-Qaida later claimed responsibility.
