2 Civil Guard Killed by Car Blast in Spain

At least two people were killed by a car bomb at a Civil Guard barracks on the Spanish island of Mallorca, officials said on Thursday, a day after a similar attack blamed on Basque separatists ETA in northern Spain.

Photo: 2 Civil Guard Killed by Car Blast in Spain

The explosion took place in Palmanova, close to the Marivent palace where Spain's royal family is spending its traditional summer holiday, Reuters reports.

A Civil Guard spokesman in Madrid said it was still too early to say what caused Thursday's blast in the Palmanova beach resort area, southwest of the resort island's capital of Palma de Mallorca, The Associated Press reports.

“We don’t know if it was a car bomb or a backpack-bomb,” the official, who declined to be named in line with policy, said today in a phone interview, Bloomberg reports.

The attack bears the hallmarks of the ETA, which has regularly targeted the Civil Guard during its 41-year campaign to carve a Basque homeland out of northern Spain and southwestern France, PRESS TV reports.

Meanwhile, ETA will on Friday mark the 50th anniversary of its founding by nationalist students inspired by Marxist-Leninist teachings, at a time when Spain was still run by right-wing dictator Francisco Franco.

It is blamed for the deaths of over 820 people as part of its campaign for an independent Basque homeland encompassing parts of northern Spain and southwest France.

The newspaper El Mundo said on Sunday that security forces were on the alert after receiving information from France that ETA planned to bring three vans packed with explosives into Spain, AFP reports.