Admiral and Driver Killed; Basques Suspected

Suspected Basque terrorists threw grenades and fired machine guns Thursday at the car of a Spanish admiral, killing him and his driver and wounding another man, police said.

The dead officer was a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus.

Two attackers raked the car of Vice Adm. Cristobal Colon y Carvajal as it drove through the Del Viso neighborhood, just off Madrid’s principal north-south artery.

Colon y Carvajal, 61, and his driver, Manuel Trillo Nunez, 55, were killed. Another officer, Cmdr. Antonio Rodriguez-Toubes Munoz, was seriously wounded in the ambush.

‘Front-Page News’

“The target was carefully chosen. With his name, they knew it would make front-page news in the United States,” said Julian Castedo, a spokesman for the Socialist government.

Police said they found two cars in the city that the terrorists had used to get away. A woman had waited in the car while the two men carried out the attack, police quoted witnesses as saying.

The admiral was the 18th Admiral of the Indies and 19th Marquis of Aguilafuerte and Jamaica. The titles were handed down from Columbus, who received them from Queen Isabella of Castille following his voyage to America in 1492.

Colon de Carvajal was a specialist in submarines and a deputy director of the navy’s personnel department.

A funeral for the admiral is scheduled for today in the naval museum.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, police said that it bore the earmarks of the separatist organization ETA, an acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom.

Eyewitnesses identified the two assailants from police wanted posters as members of ETA’s “Spain Commando” unit, which operates in Madrid, police said.

Thursday’s fatalities were the first this year in Spain as a result of a terrorist attack.

On Tuesday, a police officer and his 9-year-old daughter were seriously wounded when the officer’s car exploded in the northern Basque town of Renteria.

The Madrid attack was the first against a senior Spanish military man since ETA guerrillas killed a retired general of the paramilitary Civil Guard in the northern city of Pamplona last December.

ETA claimed responsibility for 37 deaths in 1985 and has been blamed for more than 550 slayings in Spain since 1968 as part of its drive to win independence for the northern three-province Basque country.

The government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez has refused to negotiate with ETA until the separatists agree to lay down their arms.