SPAIN:SPAIN'S POLITICAL parties yesterday suspended their election campaigns after an Eta gunman killed a former socialist councillor in the Basque town of Mondragón.
Isaias Carrasco (42) was shot as he left his apartment block for his job as a cashier on the nearby toll-road. His wife and one of his daughters, who had heard the gunfire, were the first on the scene and tried to give him first aid before the ambulance and police arrived.
Eyewitnesses say a man, hiding between two parked cars, drew a pistol and shot Mr Carrasco three times in the chest and neck. Doctors said there was little they could do to save his life and he died shortly after reaching hospital.
The gunman escaped in a car that was driven away at high speed.
Mr Carrasco, a member of the Basque Socialist Party (PSOE-PSE), was considered a soft target. He had not been involved in politics since losing his seat in Mondragón town council in municipal elections last May.
Until recently he had, like so many Basque politicians, used bodyguards, but decided he was no longer a target for terrorists and renounced them.
Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was addressing an election rally in Málaga at the time. The news was passed to him by Manuel Chaves, president of the Spanish Socialist Party.
White-faced and grim, a clearly shocked Mr Zapatero suspended the campaign and returned to Madrid where he condemned the attack on Spanish democracy. He warned those responsible that they would be arrested, brought to trial and punished.
He immediately telephoned Mariano Rajoy, leader of the opposition Popular Party, who had just ended a meeting with the PP youth movement in Madrid.
The two leaders agreed to summon a special session of the Cortes (parliament) yesterday evening attended by leaders of all the major political parties.
"We will defeat Eta using the force of law, judicial means and the security forces. They must abandon all hopes of winning," Mr Rajoy said.
It is less than a month since interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba warned that his men had information that Eta would attempt to take lives in the run-up to tomorrow's election.
Yesterday he condemned what he called "a vile and cowardly attack by a band of assassins. They have murdered a man and destroyed a family," he said.
Mr Carrasco's death is the fifth since Eta ended its ceasefire in December 2006 when they killed two men in an explosion at Madrid airport.
Yesterday a French court agreed to extradite to Spain the two men accused of this attack.
In December last year two Civil Guards were murdered outside a supermarket cafe in Capbreton, southwest France.