Dortmund: Borussia Dortmund defender Marc Bartra has said he experienced the “hardest 15 minutes” of his life after fracturing his wrist in Tuesday’s attack on the team bus.
The 26-year-old had an operation after breaking the radial bone in his arm when three explosions went off as the bus made its way to the stadium shortly before Dortmund’s Champions League clash with AS Monaco.
“The pain, the panic, and the uncertainty of not knowing what was going on, nor how long it would last... they were the longest and hardest 15 minutes of my life,” the Spain international wrote on Instagram on Friday. He was discharged on Saturday.
“About all of that I want to tell you that I think the shock of those days is easing all the time and the desire to live, struggle, work ... play (and) train ... is getting stronger.”
“What do I feel when I look at my swollen and badly damaged wrist? I feel pride, thinking that all the harm they wanted to do to us on Tuesday led to nothing worse than that.”
The accompanying photo showed Bartra looking towards his family. He had a cast on most of his right arm and around his left wrist.
On Saturday, Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke told a German magazine that he flirted with pulling the club out of the Champions League before resolving not to give in to the bombers. “I briefly asked myself if we shouldn’t withdraw completely from the competition, but that would have been a victory for those responsible for the attack,” he said.
Dortmund, by the way, bounced back from the trauma to earn an emotion-filled 3-1 home win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga on Saturday. Marco Reus, who struck with an audacious back heel after just two minutes, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Pierre-Emerick Aubemayang were all on target after the Dortmund fans gave their players a rousing reception back at the Westfalenstadion.
Meanwhile, the explosives used in the attack may have come from supplies belonging to the German armed forces, a newspaper cited a source involved in the investigation as saying on Saturday.
It is still unclear who carried out Tuesday’s attack. German prosecutors have doubts about the authenticity of letters that suggested Islamist militants were behind it and Bild newspaper cited an investigator as saying right-wing extremists were probably responsible.
“The explosives in the pipe bombs, which were filled with metal pins, might have come from the stocks of the German armed forces but that’s still being checked,” newspaper Welt am Sonntag cited a source involved in the investigation as saying.
The source also said that specialist knowledge was required to use the military detonators, which are not easy to get.
A spokeswoman for the federal public prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the report.
Welt am Sonntag said police thought further attacks were possible, citing a document sent to regional police headquarters as saying that soccer games, rock concerts and cultural events were particularly at risk.
It said regional police wanted to have a greater presence if necessary and use dogs trained to sniff out explosives.
Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of the state of Bavaria, told the same newspaper Bavaria planned to use more video surveillance, especially in crime hotspots and in public places - a controversial issue in Germany, where memories of the Nazi Gestapo and the Stasi security police still linger.
Joachim Thomas, chairman of the association of German stadium operators, told the newspaper he believed full-body scanners would be used at entrances to stadiums in future. Arnold Plickert, GdP police union’s deputy chairman, said police were overstretched already and did not have enough staff to keep watch over a team’s hotel night after night so clubs would have to provide extra security staff if they wanted that.
