Bomb damages printing facilities of newspaper in Basque Country

amplify image

Bomb damages printing facilities of newspaper in Basque Country. Photo: EFE

Related galleries

• ETA's attack in Zamudio

An explosion damaged the printing facilities of El Correo newspaper in Zamudio, near the northern port city of Bilbao in the Basque Country early Sunday, but no one was injured.

People were working when the device went off about 3.00 a.m. (0100 GMT) Sunday and the building was damaged. Accoring to the Basque Interior Minister no warning was received and the area has been cordoned off by Basque police.

Around 50 people were preparing Sunday's paper when the explosion blasted "a 40-square-meter (430-square-foot) hole in a concrete wall", according to Basque radio station Radio Euskadi.

The bomb Sunday contained about 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of explosives, a regional Interior Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with government rules.

El Correo said whoever planted the device would have had to have climbed over a high security fence, which was also damaged by the force of the blast. The printing works of El Correo are located in Zamudio, an industrial town just east of Bilbao's international airport.

As the newspaper said on its website "The bomb at our plant in Zamudio will not stop us printing and will not silence our voice, which speaks for hundreds of thousands of Basques who want to see the end of ETA".