Bomb blast at Basque TV headquarters after ETA alert: police



MADRID (AFP) - A car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the Basque broadcasting network in the city of Bilbao Wednesday, minutes after the area was evacuated following a warning call in the name of the separatist group ETA, police said.
There appeared to be no casualties in the blast, which took place at 11:05 am (1005 GMT), a police spokesman said.



Bomb blast at Basque TV headquarters after ETA alert: police
Spanish television showed a huge column of white smoke arising from the Basque Radio and Television (EiTB) headquarters in Bilbao, in Spain's northern Basque Country.
The building is adjacent to another housing other media groups in the Basque economic capital.
The EiTB headquarters and the surrounding area were evacuated just minutes before the blast after a person claiming to represent ETA called the local fire service warning of an imminent explosion at the site.
Police spotted a suspect vehicle near the building, and its owner was found tied up in the mountains.
Media professionals have frequently been the targets of ETA, which is blamed for the deaths of 825 people in its 40-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.
Both the European Union and the United States consider it a terrorist group.
ETA called off a 15-month-old ceasefire in June last year, saying it had grown tired of a lack of concessions on the part of the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in their tentative peace talks.
That truce had effectively ended when ETA bombed a car park at Madrid airport on December 30, 2006, killing two Ecuadoran men who were sleeping in their cars.
ETA is blamed for the deaths of four people this year, including a municipal councillor killed just days before general elections in March and a Basque businessman who was gunned down in the street early this month.
But it has been hard hit this year by police operations in both Spain and France.
The group's presumed overall leader, Javier Lopez Pena, was arrested in the French city of Bordeaux in May in an operation Spanish officials at the time boasted had "decapitated" the organisation.
In November, French police arrested Miguel de Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, known as "Txeroki", suspected of being the head of ETA's military operations.
And on December 8, Txeroki's suspected successor, Aitzol Iriondo Yarza, was detained in southwestern France.
France and Spain have stepped up cooperation to crack down on ETA since a special accord was signed in January allowing Spanish agents to operate in southwestern France.


Wednesday, December 31st 2008
Hhdod
           


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