French and Spanish police have arrested three suspected members of armed Basque separatist group ETA who operated a secret "electronics workshop" to make bomb components.
Police found several bombs at the workshop, and the three men arrested carried pistols and false documents, Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
"This cell of the terrorist group ETA was well-known and due to the importance of its role - making electronic devices that were then used in explosives - dismantling it was of prime importance," Acebes told a news conference on Friday.
Authorities had been tracking the group since September 2001 and finally caught up with them on Friday in a house in Chatellerault, in western France.
Several of the bombs and electronics devices found at the house were primed for use in attacks, Acebes said.