ETA Blamed for Bombing Outside Spanish TV Station

MADRID, Dec. 31 -- A car bomb exploded Wednesday outside a regional television station in northern Spain after a warning call from the armed separatist group ETA, police said.

The blast caused significant damage and one person suffered an ear injury, according to the TV broadcaster EITB, which stayed on the air despite the explosion at its headquarters in the center of the city of Bilbao.

"They have tried to silence one of this country's media outlets," EITB director Bingen Zupiria told reporters outside the building later.

Police said the bomb exploded shortly after 11 a.m. The building had been evacuated and the area cordoned off to traffic after a warning call to a fire department about an hour earlier.

Spain's state-run TV station broadcast footage showing the explosion. After a flash of fire, the blast blew out dozens of windows on the glass facade of the six-story building. Then a large plume of thick smoke rose up and partially obscured the damaged structure.

The attack occurred less than a month after the fatal shooting of a Basque businessman Dec. 3, for which ETA was blamed.

ETA has killed more than 825 people since 1968 in its campaign for Basque independence. The group declared a cease-fire in March 2006 that led to peace talks. But it broke the truce with a car bomb Dec. 30, 2006, at Madrid's Barajas airport, killing two people.

"ETA can attack, but it will lose all the battles," Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said Wednesday. "The only thing it will achieve will be to put the terrorists in jail quicker."

Police in Bilbao said agents followed tips from the caller Wednesday and found the owner of the vehicle used in the attack tied to a tree in woods outside the city.

With a population of just under 1 million, Bilbao is the Basque region's main city and home to one of the Guggenheim museums.

The caller gave no reason for the attack, but Basque regional government spokeswoman Miren Azkarate said, "EITB has been an ETA target for a long time."

Several other media outlets are housed in the building, including a bureau of El Mundo newspaper.

Although most of ETA's victims in the past have been security force members, the group has regularly targeted political parties, bank, businesses, public transport, as well as the media.

There has been a wave of arrests of ETA suspects in recent months. Aitzol Iriondo, suspected to be the leader, was arrested in southern France on Dec. 8, three weeks after his alleged predecessor, Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, alias Txeroki, was captured, also in France.