SPAIN: Police in Spain and France have arrested 34 people in a raid which the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr José Maria Aznar, said was one of the most important operations against the Basque armed group ETA.
Twenty-nine were detained early yesterday mostly in Spain's northern Basque and Navarre regions on suspicion of belonging to ETA and recruiting for the organisation. ETA is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
French police sources said four men and one woman connected to the banned radical Basque youth group Segi were arrested in Bayonne in the south of the country.
Mr Aznar said on state radio it was "one of the most important and extensive operations that has been carried out in the fight against terror".
The Interior Minister, Mr Angel Acebes, told a news conference that ETA's organisational capacity was reduced thanks to recent police operations which have put some of the group's key members behind bars.
ETA has killed more than 840 people since 1968 in a campaign for an independent Basque state straddling northern Spain and southwest France.
The last fatal ETA attack was in May when a bomb killed two police officers and seriously wounded a third.