ETA bomb blast hits community center in northern Spain: radio
April 21, 2008 - 0:0
MADRID (AFP) -- A bomb went off Sunday outside a community center in the northern Spanish town of Elgoibar, causing damage but no injuries after a warning call was made in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, public radio RNE reported.
The blast, which occurred at 3:25 am at the ""Casa del Pueblo"" or ""House of the People"", also caused significant damage to surrounding buildings, including the local offices of Spain's ruling Socialist Party, it said.Roughly an hour earlier a man who claimed to speak in the name of ETA called regional traffic department DYA to warn that the bomb would go off at 3:30 am in the Basque town, the report said.
Police then cordoned off the area and evacuated nearby buildings.
Calls to DYA have traditionally been used by ETA to warn of imminent explosions in the Basque country.
The blast comes just three days after seven police were slightly injured after a bomb exploded at a Socialist Party office in Bilbao, the Basque region's main city, when they were trying to evacuate the area.
The blast shattered windows and damaged cars at the party office on the outskirts of the Basque region's main city.
""The explosion was deafening. I live in one of the buildings and we are all terrified,'' said Rosa Zunzunegi, a 68-year-old retired woman. ""We are working-class people. Why does ETA attack us with bombs? They are swine.''
""We had to evacuate old people, children, people who were in their houses sleeping at this time,'' Basque Interior Department chief Javier Balza told Cadena SER radio. ""The houses are badly damaged. In the end, it's the people who suffer the madness of the terrorists.''
ETA has killed over 800 people in Spain in shootings and bombings as part of its 40-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland.
It has killed two police officers and a former Socialist Party town councilor in shootings since officially calling off a ceasefire in June 2007 citing a lack of concessions on the part of the government in peace talks.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was re-elected last month in a general election with a slightly bigger majority, launched the talks in June 2006, three months after ETA announced its truce.
Since the end of the ceasefire, Spanish authorities have adopted a hard line, arresting dozens of members of both ETA and its banned political wing, Batasuna, and Zapatero has ruled out any further talks with the group.
ETA, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language, is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.