Silence, wreaths and tears as Spain remembers bombing victims

Traffic came to a halt and people stood still on Madrid sidewalks Friday as Spain showed its grief, solidarity and anger on the one-year anniversary of the March 11 train bombings that ranked as the country's worst-ever terrorist attack. The five-minute silence from midday (1100 GMT) left the capital in suspension, its citizens remembering the day a year ago 10 bombs planted by Islamic extremists blew apart four commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding 1,900.
Motorists stepped out of their cars to bow their heads under the bright sunlight. Office workers exited buildings to stand quietly next to pedestrians who looked straight ahead, or at the ground. Trains across the country halted.
Spanish King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero stood solemnly in silence, as television screens everywhere scrolled the long list of the victims' names.
For many survivors and the families of those killed, the public reopening of wound still fresh was too much to bear, and they eschewed the ceremonies to grieve in private.
Others, though, confronted their loss at the three train stations in the capital hit by the blasts blamed on a group loyal to the al Qaeda extremist network.
US President George W. Bush, who criticised Zapatero's decision immediately after winning power to withdraw Spanish troops from the US-led military coalition in Iraq, sent a message of sympathy on the eve of the anniversary.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Moroccan King Mohammed VI attended the ceremony, where the minutes of silence came to an end with a lone woman cellist played Pablo Casals' "El Cant dells Ocells" (The Song of the Birds).
Annan, at an earlier media conference, said of the survivors and the victims' families: "The world mourns with them."
The emotional day began with Madrid's 650 churches all ringing at sunrise, at the exact time the bombs went off a year ago. Police carried a wreath to place before a memorial inscribed with the victims' names.
Meanwhile, the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, vowed to defeat "infidels and apostates" in a statement published on the Internet Friday in response to a Madrid conference on terrorism.