Eta Bombing Shuts Spanish Airport

Eta struck again yesterday in its summer campaign against tourism targets and the Spanish economy, exploding a car bomb outside the airport at Santander, in northern Spain.

The bomb, hidden inside a Renault 19 in the airport car park, caused damage to the airport building and other cars but no injuries.

A telephoned warning gave the police an hour to evacuate the airport before the bomb exploded. About 60 people in the terminal were escorted to safety on the airport runway.

"Once again, Eta has tried to sow terror," a grim-faced interior minister, Angel Acebes, told reporters. "Eta does whatever it can whenever it can."

A spokesman for the Spanish airport authority said flights to and from Santander had been suspended, but might resume today.

The bomb wrecked the front of the terminal building, blowing out windows and twisting metal, wrecked 12 cars and caused lesser damage to about 40 other vehicles.

The attack came less than a week after Eta exploded bombs in tourist hotels in Benidorm and Alicante. Thirteen people were injured in those two blasts, including several young foreigners studying Spanish at a language academy in Alicante.

Eta bombed two targets in Santander, without injuring anyone, last year.

In 2001 it attacked two airports, Barajas at Madrid and Pablo Picasso at Malaga, again without injuring anyone.

But a bomb planted in Reus airport, eastern Spain, in 1997 injured 35 people, many of them tourists from Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

Eta, which was placed on the EU's official list of terror groups 18 months ago, has recently threatened to widen its attacks to include foreign businesses operating in Spain.