Police found a suspected ETA arms factory and a large supply of weapons on a farm in southwestern France today and arrested two men believed to be members of the Basque separatist group.
A police source said rockets and missile launchers were among the weapons discovered in the village of Saint Michel in the Basque area of the French Pyrenees, near the border with Spain.
Both the suspected ETA members, one of whom was the farm owner, were armed when they were arrested, the source said.
Spain hailed the discovery and arrests, which the source said were connected with the capture of three ETA leaders in southwestern France on Friday.
"First indications are that this could be one of the biggest arsenals of weapons, of different types of explosives, that (ETA) has at the moment," Spanish Interior Minister Mr Angel Acebes told a news conference in Madrid.
He said ETA may have used the hideout not only to stockpile weapons and explosives but also as an arms factory.
Spain says recent raids against ETA in France have thrown the organisation into disarray.
Felix Alberto Lopez de la Calle, alias "Mobutu" and believed to be ETA's military mastermind, was among those arrested in France on Friday.
Felix Ignacio Esparza Luri, accused of being ETA's top logistics organiser, and Maria Mercedes Chivite Berango, suspected of a senior role in the group, were also arrested.
Police also discovered an arms cache, including bombs that were ready to be used, in an apartment in the French Pyrenees on Friday.
In another blow against ETA, anti-terror squad officers and detectives from the southwestern city of Bordeaux arrested Gorka Palacios Alday in December. Acebes described him at the time as "the number one in the terrorist organisation ETA".
ETA is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union. It has killed close to 850 people since 1968 in its fight for an independent Basque homeland carved out of northern Spain and southwestern France.
Spanish authorities initially blamed the group for the March 11th Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people but later backed off that claim and are focusing on the al-Qaeda network.