Car bomb blamed on Basque militants kills policeman in Spain

LEGUTIANO, Spain -- Suspected Basque separatists bombed a village police barracks housing officers and their families Wednesday, killing one person and wounding four. Spain's government described it as an attempted massacre.

In the first fatal attack blamed on the militant separatist group ETA in more than two months, the pre-dawn car bombing in the Basque village of Legutiano in northern Spain blew off part of the building's roof, raining down debris and trapping people inside.

ETA often phones in warnings before attacks, but there was no alert this time. The assailants used a large amount of explosives at the building with 29 people inside, including five children, some of them babies, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.

The group "has failed in its attack because it had planned to cause a massacre, although it did not fail completely because it killed an innocent person who was just doing his job," he said after visiting the barracks in Legutiano, a village of 1,500 near the regional capital, Vitoria.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called the attack "cowardly, despicable and criminal."

ETA declared what it described as a permanent cease-fire in March 2006, but reverted to violence in a matter of months when peace talks with Spain's socialist government stalled. Since then it has staged more than 20 attacks, including several in recent weeks in the Basque region and neighboring Navarra.

But they paled in comparison with Wednesday's blast, which shattered windows and left a huge crater in the ground.

At least two people were trapped in the rubble, including the dead Civil Guard officer. Another officer was pulled out with injuries. Three other Civil Guards also were wounded.

"I'm fed up with witnessing mornings like these in the Basque region," Basque regional President Juan Jose Ibarretxe said. "We don't deserve these sad mornings, but we must not give up."

At a military ceremony at the Royal Palace in Madrid, King Juan Carlos and his guests observed a moment of silence. Lawmakers carried out a similar tribute in parliament.

Zapatero traveled later to Vitoria to attend the slain officer's wake. Town halls across Spain planned to observe five minutes of silence at noon Thursday.

"I can assure you that democracy will defeat terror," Zapatero told parliament before leaving Madrid. "Freedom will defeat murderous fanaticism."

The dead officer was identified as Juan Manuel Pinuel Villalon, 41, who was married and had a 6-year-old son. He had been posted at the barracks for only two months.

Before Wednesday's car bombing, the last fatal attack by ETA was the shooting of a former town councilor in the Basque town of Mondragon on March 7, two days before Spain's general election.

The Basque group, which is fighting to carve out an independent homeland in lands straddling Spain and France, ended its cease-fire in December 2006 after failing to win concessions in peace talks with the socialist government. It killed two people in a huge car bombing at Madrid airport.

The death toll since then stands at six, including Wednesday's fatality. ETA has killed more than 820 people since launching its campaign of bombings and shootings in the late 1960s.

The government, which was caught off guard by the 2006 blast, launched an intense crackdown on ETA members, arresting dozens and suspending two pro-ETA nationalist parties.

In recent days, Zapatero has angered Basque nationalists even more by dismissing a plan by Ibarretxe to hold a referendum in the region on whether the Basque people prefer the status quo or believe they have the right to break away from Spain.

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Associated Press writers Daniel Woolls and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.