French police detain 3 Eta suspects

French police arrested three suspected members of the Basque separatist group Eta in southern France today.

French police arrested three suspected members of the Basque separatist group Eta in southern France today.

Police said the arrests took place in Bagneres-de-Bigorre, a small town close to the southwestern city of Lourdes.

The premises where the three people were arrested were searched by police and the suspects were to be transferred to the French capital later in the day.

They come two days after the group told the Spanish government it was ending a 15-month ceasefire.

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Eta, which has been fighting for an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France for four decades, said on Tuesday it was abandoning a ceasefire it had declared in March 2006.

The government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero started exploratory peace talks in mid-2006 but broke them off at the end of the year after Eta killed two people with a bomb at Madrid airport in December.