A security agent at the Ukrainian embassy in Spain was injured on Wednesday (30) after opening a letter bomb addressed to the head of the diplomatic post. The attack caused minor injuries but prompted Kiev to announce increased security at all offices of its overseas representations.
The letter arrived by regular mail and caused “a very small wound on the ring finger of my right hand,” Mercedes Gonzales, a Spanish government official, told Telemadrid. The correspondence was addressed to diplomat Serhii Pohoreltsev and was opened in the embassy garden.
The injured officer sought medical attention on his own and is at no greater risk. According to the newspaper El País, the man is Ukrainian and works for a private security agency.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmitro Kuleba, has ordered all embassies in the country to urgently tighten security. The chancellery spokesman, in a statement, urged Spain to investigate the attack as urgently and claimed that the perpetrators of the attack “will not be able to intimidate Ukrainian diplomats or interrupt their daily work to strengthen Ukraine and fight Russian aggression”.
There is still no information about the motivation and authorship of the attack. The Spanish state company responsible for the mail did not release information about the sender of the correspondence.
The residential area around the embassy, in northwest Madrid, has been cordoned off and has been inspected by a bomb disposal unit. Dozens of policemen, armed with rifles, blocked roads to reinforce the security of the place.
Detectives are investigating the incident, assisted by forensic experts and intelligence officers, Spanish police said. Spain’s Supreme Court will conduct the inquiry.
Spain’s Scientific Police are analyzing what’s left of the letter bomb. According to El País, the investigation is also seeking answers about the failure of scanners traditionally used at the embassy.
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