Spain airport blast after ETA call
By Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- "At least one projectile" has exploded near a small airport in the northern city of Zaragoza after a warning call to a newspaper in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA alerted authorities to the attack, government officials told CNN.
The airport was evacuated before the explosion and there were no reported injuries, the officials said.
The explosion occurred about 12:30 p.m. local time (1030 GMT) Friday, about 300 meters from Zaragoza's civilian airport, which is next to a Spanish air force base. The base was not affected, the officials said.
ETA often makes warning calls ahead of its attacks, to a Basque newspaper, Gara, which Friday reported on its Web site that it received "an anonymous call in the name of ETA" at 11:15 a.m. local time.
The call warned of a mortar attack on the Zaragoza airport that would occur between noon and 2 p.m. local time, the newspaper reported.
Authorities were quickly alerted and ordered the evacuation of the Zaragoza airport, which did not have any scheduled flights at that hour, so it was mainly airport personnel who were evacuated, said a spokeswoman for Spain's Airport Authority, AENA.
The evacuation included airport personnel and passengers, who could be seen in television pictures with their rolling suitcases walking on the entry road to the airport.
A Ryanair flight from London to Zaragoza was diverted from the civilian airport to the adjacent air force base, where it landed without incident at 12:35 p.m. local time, an AENA spokeswoman told CNN.
AENA said flights had not been suspended at the civilian airport, although she said it was not immediately clear what action the airlines serving Zaragoza would take later in the day, to maintain or suspend flights.
Gara reported that "two mortars" exploded near the Zaragoza airport.
However, a spokesman for the central government's main office in Zaragoza said he could not confirm they were mortars, although he said police found "the impact of at least one projectile" and also found "three launchers" near the airport.
The spokesman said he did not immediately have a description of the launchers and did not know if they were homemade or professional military category.
Protest marches
ETA, whose initials stand for Basque Homeland and Freedom, is blamed for more than 800 deaths since 1968 in its fight for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain. Zaragoza, which is 325 kilometers (201 miles) northeast of Madrid, is not part of the Basque region.
ETA, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, was blamed for a car bomb last month in Madrid that caused several dozen minor injuries and extensive property damage.
The explosion Friday comes as a national debate rages over the Socialist government's offer to hold talks with ETA if it would first renounce violence and lay down its arms.
Last weekend hundred of thousands of people, including relatives of those killed or wounded by ETA bomb attacks, packed the streets of Madrid to protest the government's move.
Most parties in Parliament have back the government on the offer, but the main opposition conservative Popular Party opposes the initiative, saying it plays into ETA's hands.
Zaragoza's airport is a small facility among Spain's 47 airports. Last year, Zaragoza's airport handled 215,000 passengers and 9,300 incoming and outgoing flight operations, the AENA spokeswoman said.
ETA wants independence for the three-province Basque region in northern Spain, a fourth Spanish province, Navarra, and also three departments in southwestern France. Those combined territories have a population of about three million people, most of them in Spain.
