Madrid - An alleged leader of the armed Basque separatist organisation, ETA, was among three people who died in a car bomb explosion in Bilbao yesterday, Spain's EFE news agency reported citing anti-terrorist sources.
The report said the man in question was Mr Patxi Rementeria, believed to have been head of ETA's Biscay commando unit, one of the separatist group's most deadly units.
The two others killed, a young man and a young woman, were also members of ETA, said police in Bilbao, northern Spain.
The vehicle with the victims inside exploded while it was moving and weapons were found in the wreck of the car which was reduced to a mass of charred metal, Bilbao police said.
One of the badly-burned bodies was found many metres from the wreckage of the car, an all-terrain vehicle licensed in Madrid, correspondents at the scene said.
The explosion occurred at around 10:50 p.m. (20.50 GMT) as the car was being driven in the Bolueta district of northern Bilbao, an industrial zone.
The vast majority of people in Spain's Basque region want the country's political leaders to try to convince the separatist group to declare a fresh ceasefire in its armed conflict, a poll showed on Friday.
ETA has been linked to the deaths of about 800 people during more three decades of armed struggle for an independent state in northern Spain and southwestern France.
One of the last active, armed separatist groups in Western Europe, ETA called a ceasefire in 1998 but ended the truce last December after a single, fruitless round of peace talks with the government.
The centre-right administration of Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, has maintained a hardline stance against the separatists. It has also been at loggerheads with moderate Basque nationalists who condemn ETA but seek Basque self-determination.
Last month, ETA embarked on one of its most violent offensives in years, with a series of car bombs, and the assassinations of a councillor in Malaga, southern Spain, and a former prefect in Tolosa, northern Spain.