Several suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA, arrested earlier this week, were planning a series of attacks across the country, the Spanish interior minister said today.
The swoop yielded a list of about 40 potential targets across the Basque region and the entire country, Mariano Rajoy told journalists during a visit to Jaen in southern Spain.
Authorities also recovered 35 kilograms (77 pounds) of dynamite in their series of arrests on Thursday in northern Spain, he said.
The minister said the targets were banks, Spanish civil guard barracks, hotels, transport companies, government buildings in the Basque country and in neighboring regions of Cantabria, Castilla, Leon and Rioja.
The commando carried out its first attack on June 10 in the Basque town of Logrono, when a car bomb caused substantial damage but no injuries, Rajoy said.
The dynamite was believed to have come from a large consignment stolen by ETA members in the French town of Grenoble on March 7.
Among the seven arrested were three brothers and two women who did not feature in police files on ETA.
Two were also members of EKIN, an organisation considered by the authorities to be a political wing of ETA.
Almost 800 people have been killed in ETA's bloody three-decade campaign for an independent homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.
AFP