Basque separatist group ETA said today it was responsible for five bombs set off during a European Union summit last month, which injured seven people.
Two Basque-language newspapers published excerpts from an ETA communique in which the armed group said it had carried out attacks in Fuengirola, Marbella and Mijas on the south coast and in the central and northern cities of Zaragoza and Santander on June 21st and 22nd.
ETA said its aim was to damage "Spain's tourist and economic interests". Security around the EU meeting in the southern city of Seville was extreme after Spanish police claimed to have foiled an ETA attack in the days leading up to the summit. Fuengirola, where a British tourist was seriously injured by shrapnel, is 160 kms (100 miles) from Seville.
ETA has killed 800 people in its 34-year campaign of bombings and shootings to back its demands for an independent Basque state carved out of northern Spain and southern France. The Spanish government recently approved a controversial law which it hopes will allow the courts to ban Basque separatist party Batasuna, which is openly sympathetic to ETA.
The law has angered Batasuna as well as the more moderate Basque Nationalist Party which governs the northern region.
Hours after ETA claimed responsibility for the bombings, state radio reported that Spain's High Court had frozen the bank accounts of Batasuna, the first step in a move to embargo the party's assets.
Earlier this week a judge ordered Batasuna to pay €24 million in damages for street violence carried out by its youth arm Segi.
Batasuna, which has the support of around 10 per cent of Basque voters, said yesterday it could not and should not pay the fine and that it amounted to a de facto ban.