THE owner of a residential home in Weir has spoken of how he witnessed a car bomb explode in the Majorcan resort of Palma Nova, killing two police officers.

David Clough was holidaying with his wife, Carol, when the bomb was detonated last Thursday across from his hotel Sol Tordos.

David, who has owned Deerplay Rest Home, in Heald Lane, Weir, for the last 12 years, said: “We had just had our lunch and were sunbathing and I happened to be looking in the direction of the road at around 2pm.

“There was a loud bang and I saw the windscreen of the car fly up into the air.

“We were just yards away from it.”

Two civilian police guards – Carlos Saenz de Tejada Garcia and Diego Salva Lesaun – were killed instantly when the bomb exploded underneath the patrol car they were sitting outside the El Foc barracks in Palma Nova.

A further device was reported to have been discovered and diffused under another vehicle.

David, from Oldham, said he didn’t cut short his week-long holiday but, after the bomb went off, security guards were put on his hotel to stop reporters getting in and talking to the holiday-makers.

Tourists in a sister hotel adjacent to Sol Tordos were affected. David said the police sealed off the building as initially it was believed that the bomb had been detonated by a rem-ote device, which could have been in the hotel.

The Majorcan attack came a day after another car bomb destroyed much of a police barracks in the Spanish city of Burgos and left more than 50 people slightly wounded.

Both have been blamed on the Basque separatist group, Eta.

Spanish authorities have released photographs of six alleged members of the Eta terrorist group thought to belong to a unit that planned last week’s bomb attacks.