From 9/11 to 3/11; Coordinated bomb attacks in Spain--a stalwart American ally--kill 200 people on passenger trains and raise new fears of Qaeda-style terror assaults. A Special Report.(Cover Story)

Publication: Newsweek

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Byline: Christopher Dickey, With Eric Pape and Juliane Von Reppert-Bismarck in Madrid, Stryker McGuire and Liat Radcliffe in London, Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh in Washington

Cell phones were vital components in the mass destruction that hit Spain last week, and they were symbols, too, of the horror that lingered afterward. Since 9/11, terrorists have known that the most ordinary things in modern life can be turned to apocalyptic purposes: box cutters, laptops, commercial airliners. All that's required is planning and discipline, secrecy and the will to slaughter innocents.

In Madrid, the terrorists showed they'd learned those lessons well. They used a very simple delivery system: 13 backpacks and gym bags left lying around in commuter trains as they pulled into three crowded stations. Each held about 25 pounds of a high explosive. The detonators were wired to the phones. When they rang, 10 of the bombs went off. In the carnage afterward, as 200 people lay dead or dying, and an additional 1,500 of the injured screamed and staggered beside the tracks, witnesses remember that other phones, the personal ones on the mangled corpses, started to ring, too, in a horrible cacophony. Friends and relatives were trying to reach the...

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