French and Spanish police on Saturday foiled a car bomb plot by Basque separatist group ETA, netting its alleged top bombmaker and three colleagues in what analysts termed a major blow for ETA.
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told reporters in Madrid the arrests in southwestern France, during which police also seized explosives and detonators, were of "enormous importance."
They were the culmination of an operation begun when three other ETA suspects were arrested on the French side of the border in July in a vehicle carrying 165kg of explosives, he said.
Rubalcaba added the suspects had played key roles in a bomb attack at Madrid's Barajas airport last December that killed two people.
"To the question `Were they preparing an attack?' the answer is yes, they were preparing a car bomb," Rubalcaba said.
The quartet arrested in the joint Spanish-French swoop on a house in the town of Cahors included Luis Ignacio Iruretagoyena, who French and Spanish officials said was ETA's chief explosives expert.
French deputy prosecutor Jean-Michel Bourles said the house in Cahors, rented by the suspects, contained a workshop capable of making bombs "able to make enormous explosions."
Bourles added some 30 detonators had also been unearthed along with an explosive device packed with some 500g of pentrite, a powerful explosive, and other bomb-making equipment, including 200kg of aluminum powder and 150 of ammonium nitrate.
He added police also seized two cars stolen in France.
Bourles warned that despite the arrests "it is evident ETA has a habit of very rapidly preparing people for this kind of mission" in their place.
Rubalcaba said it was "highly probable" Iruretagoyena fashioned the explosives used in the Madrid airport and another foiled attack in the northeastern Spanish town of Castellon last week, when ETA operatives blew up a camper van full of explosives after abducting a Spanish family on holiday in southern France.
Also arrested was Ander Mugica Andonegi.
He had been hunted since fleeing in a taxi in July when it was stopped by a police roadblock in Torreblanca, Spain, leaving behind two bags containing detonators and explosives.
A third man, identified as Ohian Barandalla Goni, was described as the second-in-charge of ETA's paramilitary wing. He was wanted for allegedly helping steal 350 firearms from a factory in southern France last October.
A woman also arrested was named as Alaitz Aramendi Jaunarena, who has been on the run for several years.
ETA is being blamed for 819 killings over a four-decade campaign for the independence of the Basque region of northern Spain and southwest France.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS