A MEMBER of the paramilitary Civil Guards was shot by suspected Eta terrorists in the early hours of yesterday morning. He said he opened fire when he saw two men acting suspiciously near the Civil Guard barracks in Leitza, near Pamplona.
It is believed they were trying to place an explosive device outside the apartment building which houses the guards and their families.
He was admitted to the Navarre Hospital where surgeons operated on him for gunshot wounds to the arm. They said his injuries were not life-threatening and described his condition as comfortable.
He is also reported to have been hit with three more bullets which were deflected by his body armour.
Police say it is possible that one of the gunmen was also injured, but escaped, after the exchange of gunfire.
On hearing the shooting, other guards rushed out to support their colleague and cordoned off the area searching with their tracker dogs. They later found two rocket-launcher tubes, cables and a small metal container which did not contain any explosives, but which anti-terrorist police described as “a half-finished booby trap”.
If this should prove to be the work of Eta, it is not the first time Leitza CG barracks has been targeted. In 2002 a civil guard was shot and killed in the town when he was pulling down a pro-Eta poster and later four other guards were seriously injured when terrorists blew up their vehicle.
This weekend’s incident comes less than a week after the detention of 34 alleged members of Segi, Eta’s youth wing, which has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court.
They were transferred to Madrid where the examining magistrate, Judge Fernando Marlaska-Grande, carried out his interrogation. He charged them with collaboration with terrorists and ordered imprisonment for 31 of them and released three others on bail.
Several of those arrested last week already have police records for kale borroka – street violence.
When announcing their detention, Judge Marlaska-Grande described Segi as “a terrorist training academy” which recruited Eta militants and trained them for terrorist operations.
He blamed Segi for the campaign of kale borroka across the Basque country, when gangs of youths regularly go on a rampage through the streets, attacking banks, public transport and commercial property.
Other Segi supporters are believed to have been responsible for further attacks this weekend when a local railway station was destroyed with a fire bomb, a bus, cash machines and rubbish containers set on fire.