Police find more explosives near primed ETA bomb

5 January 2007

BILBAO — Police found bomb-making material near where they earlier discovered an almost-complete explosive device thought to belong to ETA, authorities said on Friday.

The find comes on the heels of last weekend’s deadly car-bomb attack by ETA in Madrid.

The material, which included aluminum powder, detonators and timers, was hidden close to the roadside picnic ground in Atxondo valley where police on Thursday found a drum packed with 100 kilograms (around 220 pounds) of explosives and lacking only a detonator.

Along with the drum-bomb, authorities spotted a vehicle they said was the same one used by the ETA militants who planted the explosives cache detected by Basque regional police on 23 December in the nearby town of Amorebieta.

Last Saturday, ETA members detonated a van packed with explosives inside a parking garage at Madrid’s Barajas international airport, killing two people and leaving some two-dozen others injured.

The bomb-making material found on Friday was separated among several bags and was stored along with parts and equipment used to make fake license plates.

The terrorist attack in Madrid marked an apparent end to the peace process Jose Luis Rodriguez launched last spring with hopes of ending four decades of Basque separatist violence.

ETA, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, has killed more than 800 people in its quest to carve out an independent Basque nation from parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.

The airport bombing came nine months after ETA proclaimed a permanent cease-fire and more than three years after the group’s last lethal attack.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news