Pascual Iris Toribio

Description

Pascual Iris Toribio was 20 years old and had two great passions in life: disco music and video games. He loved DJing and, although he was working as a mobile phone salesman, his dream was to become a professional DJ. On the morning of 11 March 2004, he was on his way to Recoletos from Vallecas, where he had arranged to meet his friend,, Marcos, to take the train together. When they met, his friend had just lit a cigarette but Pascual decided to go on ahead and wait for him at Atocha station. Marcos heard the explosions and knew he would probably never see his friend again.

11 March 2004 fell on a Thursday. Early that morning, a number of terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda planted thirteen bombs on four suburban trains covering routes running through Madrid. Ten of the bombs exploded between 7.37 and 7.39 am, when the trains were at Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia stations and alongside Calle Téllez. 191 people were killed in the attack and around 1,500 were wounded. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Spanish history. On 3 April 2004, agents from the Special Operations Group (GEO) were about to enter an apartment in Leganés where the perpetrators of the attacks were believed to be hiding when the terrorists detonated twenty kilograms of explosives in an act of collective suicide. The ensuing blast killed one of the officers, bringing the total number of people killed by the 11 March bombers to 192.

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