A Socialist town councilor was shot dead in a bar in northern Spain today in an attack politicians have blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA,.
Police said Juan Priede was shot at close range by two gunmen just after 2 pm (1 pm Irish time) as he stood in a bar just a few yards away from his home in the Basque coastal town of Orio.
The head of the Basque regional government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, described the killing as another "ETA barbarity."
Priede, 69, was a widower with children. Police said his two bodyguards dropped him at his house for lunch but that he later left alone to visit a neighborhood bar.
"He was someone who had appeared on ETA's hit list," Rosa Diez, a Socialist deputy in the European Parliament, told reporters. "He has been murdered by these fascist cowards.
"Those who have killed him have to know they are going to pay for it, that we are going to catch them. We are going to put a stop to ETA," she added.
ETA, recently listed by the European Union as a terrorist organisation, has killed more than 800 people since 1968 in its drive for an independent state in Basque areas of northern Spain and southwestern France.