A car bomb allegedly placed by Basque separatists exploded in northern Spain on Friday, killing two police officers and prompting the prime minister to cancel plans to attend a summit in Russia.
Six people were injured in the blast that shattered windows and set cars ablaze in the town of Sanguesa in Navarra province, the capital of which is Pamplona.
It was the first blast attributed to ETA in nearly four months. The separatist group often uses car bombs in its campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France. Its attacks have killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s.
PHOTO: AP
"ETA has murdered once again," Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in Madrid, vowing to use "all means at our disposal" to fight the group and politicians linked to it.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
In response to the attack, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called off a trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was to have taken part in a summit between Russia and the EU, his office said.
Friday's attack struck police who had entered a local government building to do administrative chores. When they came out and got into their Citroen car, a bomb attached to its underside detonated, said Miguel Sanz, the Interior Ministry's top official in Navarra.
The attackers used about 3kg of high explosive, Sanz said.
An unnamed employee in the building told the news agency Efe the blast was so powerful it shook the edifice and felt like an earthquake.
The explosion came five days after Basque local elections in which hundreds of pro-independence candidates allegedly linked to ETA's outlawed political wing were barred from running.
Navarra borders the troubled Basque region and is home to many Basque nationalists. Sanguesa is 30km southeast of Pamplona.
The last attack blamed on ETA was the Feb. 8 shooting of a police chief in the Basque town of Andoiain, home to many supporters of the banned Basque party Batasuna.
The pause in violence had led to speculation that ETA might be observing a truce like the one it called in 1998. But two weeks ago hooded men calling themselves members of ETA appeared in a video broadcast on Basque TV and said the group's fight continued.
In Washington, US Department of State spokesman Philip Reeker condemned the attack and said the US deplores ETA's "long-running, senseless campaign to terrorize and kill innocent people.
"We continue to support Spain in its vigorous efforts to combat terrorism and bring the perpetrators of this despicable attack to justice," he said.
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