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Basque rebels target regional train network site

12 May 2008 21:31:30 GMT
Source: Reuters

MADRID, May 12 (Reuters) - Two small bombs targeting a regional train network under construction in Spain's troubled Basque Country exploded on Monday, an attack claimed by regional separatist guerrilla group ETA, police said.

Nobody was hurt in the pre-dawn attack by bombs hidden on bulldozers near Hernani that targeted building work on the new high-speed train network that will link the Basque Country's three biggest cities Bilbao, San Sebastian and regional capital Vitoria.

Late on Monday, a third bomb exploded in a car used by police dog handlers, the regional interior ministry told Reuters. A dog which was inside the vehicle when the explosion happened in a car park in Barakaldo, near Bilbao, was found alive.

ETA phoned traffic authorities to claim responsibility for Monday's train attack.

ETA said last November the "Basque Y" train project was a strategic target. In the 1980s, ETA declared the Lemoniz nuclear power plant in the Basque Country a strategic target, and kidnapped and killed its chief engineer. The plant never opened.

On Friday ETA claimed responsibility for four bomb attacks over the past two months.

The rebels, who have killed more than 800 people in 4 decades of armed struggle for independence for the Basque Country in northern Spain and southwestern France.

The last fatal attack the rebels claimed was the assassination of a former local politician on March 7, two days before a Spanish national election.

It had declared a ceasefire in March 2006 but efforts to find peace broke down after it planted a car bomb in a Madrid airport car park that killed two people. (Reporting by Arantza Goyoaga; Writing by Ben Harding; editing by Sami Aboudi)

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