Police officer Penny Hoskins has spoken of her fear of dying as she witnessed a terrorist bomb attack in a Spanish holiday resort.

Penny HoskinsShe and fellow police officer WPc Elizabeth Watson were today back home in Oxfordshire, cutting their holiday short after the Basque separatist group ETA terrorised tourists with a car bomb containing 110lb of explosives.

"Suddenly there was this almighty bang. I thought 'Oh God, we are going to die'.

"I threw myself over Liz and her daughter, Victoria. And then I thought that if there was a secondary explosion, we would have had it. It was just so awful," WPc Hoskins told the Oxford Mail.

"Our reactions then went from fear to anger. There was no way we were going to stay out there. We got home as soon as we could."

The two Thames Valley Police officers, plus Wpc Watson's six-year-old daughter, were three days into their week-long holiday at Salou on the Costa Dorada, about 60 miles from Barcelona.

They were staying at the Font del Mar Hotel and were in the basement bar when the bomb went off at about 7am. Spanish police had received a warning about the attack and several hotels in the area had been cleared of tourists, many of them British.

WPc Watson, a beat officer for the Hanborough area, lives in Witney and has been in the police force for 12 years. She and her daughter are still suffering from shock.

WPc Hoskins, 52, a custody officer based at Abingdon, is a divorced mother-of-three from Carterton. She has been in the force for eight years.

"There were many people in the hotel when the bomb went off. It's amazing that we all escaped with just a few of the guests suffered from minor cuts "There was glass everywhere. I saw later that windows had just caved in. One minute we were on holiday having as good time. The next minute, I think I'm going to die," she said.

"As police officers, neither Liz nor I have dealt with bomb incidents, so it was something new and frightening. "Victoria says that she never wants to go back there. We are all going to Legoland to get over it."

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: "We were sorry to hear that they were caught up in this bomb attack in Salou, Spain on Saturday morning.

"At the same time, we're relieved that they escaped without serious injuries and are now safely back home."

**Picture: David Fleming