Police have arrested three more suspects in the Madrid terrorist bombings, officials said Tuesday, bringing to 24 the number of people in custody.

Associated Press

MADRID, Spain — Police have arrested three more suspects in the Madrid terrorist bombings, officials said Tuesday, bringing to 24 the number of people in custody.

Officials at the National Court identified two Moroccans arrested Monday in the southern port city of Malaga as Abdelghafour Abderrazzak and Mohamed El Barrouchi. The Interior Ministry said a third North African had also been arrested in Malaga.

Eighteen people, 14 of them Moroccan, have been charged in connection with the bombings. Six have been charged with mass murder.

The latest three detainees and three other Moroccans arrested over the weekend in towns near Madrid are expected to be brought before an investigating magistrate later this week.

The government says the focus of its probe is the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, an al-Qaida-linked group that is also related to an organization blamed for last year's suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, which left 45 people dead including 12 attackers.

In the March 11 attacks in Madrid, 10 bombs ripped through four commuter trains during the morning rush hour, killing 191 people and wounding some 1,800.

Spanish authorities say the core members of the cell are either jailed or were among seven suspected terrorists who blew themselves up April 3 as police moved to arrest them. But at least six more prime suspects are still being sought.

Also Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said police had been able to decipher previously unintelligible sentences from a badly damaged video found in the apartment where the suicide blast took place. In the video, three of the suicide terrorists claimed responsibility for the March 11 attacks in the name of an al-Qaida group and threatened more bloodshed unless Spain withdraws its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In one previously unintelligible sentence, an Arabic-speaking man said, "We will treat you brutally. We will kill you. We will bring war to your homes, and you will not be able to sleep at night," according to the ministry.

Another sentence refers to Spain's incoming Socialist government's decision to double to 250 the country's troop contingent in Afghanistan: "Your new ruler has begun his mandate with more fighting against Muslims and sending more crusade troops to Afghanistan," according to the ministry's text.

He was referring to Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, due to be sworn in as prime minister on Friday.

The daily El Mundo said evidence found at the apartment indicated the terrorists had planned to attack a Jewish cemetery outside Madrid. Court officials, however, said judges handling the case had no knowledge of this.

Also Tuesday, U.S. intelligence agents questioned for a second day al-Qaida suspects arrested in Spain about a possible link to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

FBI agents, accompanied by a Spanish prosecutor, questioned Algerian Moussa Laouar. On Monday, they quizzed his compatriot Khaleb Madani.

Madani and Laouar were arrested in February in southeastern Spain and jailed on suspicion of having worked for al-Qaida and forging documents for the group, including passports and visas. They are not linked to the train bombings.

The leading daily El Pais said Madani is suspected of having sold a false passport to the alleged co-ordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, who is currently believed to be under detention at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Madani allegedly received money transfers of up to $1,900 Cdn from the German port city of Hamburg, home to an al-Qaida cell that included three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots. Madani has told Spanish authorities he did not know Binalshibh and did not have any connection with the Hamburg cell.

Lead suicide pilot Mohamed Atta of Egypt, part of the Hamburg cell, was in Spain at the same time as Binalshibh in July 2001 and investigators think they met in northeast Spain to finalize details of the Sept. 11 attacks.