The blasts that killed scores Thursday in Madrid, Spain, were thousands of miles away, but some Lawrence residents are feeling the shock here.

At least three students from the area who are studying in Madrid — one a 2001 Lawrence High School graduate and two Kansas University students — were safe, uninjured and tucked in hotels or in the homes of host families Thursday evening.

Thirty-seven other KU students are studying elsewhere in Spain, and the Office of Study Abroad has told them to stay put. Kansas University has several programs in Spain, including in Granada, Valencia, Seville and Santiago de Compostela.

The series of 10 bombings littered popular train station hubs throughout the city during morning rush hour.

Even those who don’t live near the Atocha station — which was hit by three blasts — probably pass through it frequently, said Maria Velasco, a Madrid native who has been living in Lawrence since 1995 and the United States since 1991.

Velasco, an associate professor of art at Kansas University, said she called her brothers and parents back home as soon as she caught news of the bombing.

“It would have been natural for them at any given point to be there,” she said, adding that her family members were safe.

ETA or al-Qaida?

The attacks, which killed at least 192 and injured at least 1,400, were unlike anything the scapegoat Basque separatist group the ETA has ever performed. Velasco, who grew up in Madrid, never felt unsafe walking or traveling about the city, even when she first started hearing of ETA-orchestrated attacks at the age of 10. The highest death toll of any of the group’s previous attacks was 21 in a 1987 supermarket explosion in Barcelona. Thursday’s string of attacks was much messier than ever before, she said.

Rescue workers collect the bodies of victims of an explosion at the Atocha train station, one of three Madrid train stations targeted by bombs. The blasts Thursday killed nearly 200 and wounded more than 1,400.

“Once upon a time these attacks had some sense of purpose,” she said. “The targets were more clear and precise and focused on important figures.”

Because of the different style of attack, a Lawrence expert on terrorism is hesitant to point the finger at ETA.

“Generally speaking, the ETA Basque separatist organization usually calls in and claims responsibility for these things,” said Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin, a terrorism expert who has studied ETA in the past. “The fact that they’ve announced that they didn’t do it, maybe they’re telling the truth, and if so, you could look back toward an al-Qaida source for a bomb targeting this kind of target.”

KU response

When news of the attacks reached Kansas University, officials at the Office of Study Abroad ordered head counts of KU students in Spain and phone calls from the students to their families.

“We know they’re accounted for; we know they’re safe,” said Todd Cohen, assistant director of University Relations.

6News video: Study Abroad program makes changes in wake of terror attacks (4-14-04) 6News video: Terrorist strike in Madrid may be linked to Al-Qaida Deadly blasts tear through Madrid commuter trains Attacks represent tactical shift for prime suspects

Class trip interrupted

Just as the week of her class trip was wrapping up, Cottey College sophomore and Lawrence native Rachel Severance returned from exploring the city of Madrid to her hotel and discovered she had been riding a tainted Metro all day long.

She and about 150 other women from the graduating class of the college in Nevada, Mo., have been on the school-funded trip since Saturday.

Speaking from her hotel-room phone at about 11 p.m. Madrid time, Severance said she had been oblivious to the attacks until Thursday evening. She had been exploring Madrid throughout the day and noticed that the Metro was more sparsely populated, that police had gathered at busy intersections and plazas and that flags were flying at half-mast

She hadn’t tried to board the line of the Metro that was attacked, but she said she didn’t sense panic among citizens.

The group today will travel a couple hours west to Avila — by bus, not train as originally planned. The group is scheduled to return to the United States sometime Saturday.