SPAIN: An explosive device blew up in a seaside hotel in south-east Spain yesterday, injuring at least one person, after a warning call in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, officials said.
The device had been hidden in a backpack and left on a patio in the 280-room hotel, but the building was evacuated before it exploded, an Interior Ministry source said.
Local police said two people had been injured but the Interior Ministry said later the only injury at the hotel, where 160 people were staying, had been a guest with damaged eardrums.
The blast followed a warning call to the Basque roadside assistance authority in the name of ETA, a spokesman there said.
"There's a device in Hotel Port Denia, in Denia. In 40 minutes it will explode," the spokesman quoted a woman as saying. "Long live ETA," she added in Basque. The Interior Ministry source said the device blew up 35 minutes after the call.
It is less than two weeks since a car bomb exploded in a coastal town in the Basque country, injuring a police officer and crushing growing expectations of a ceasefire by ETA, which has killed nearly 850 people since 1968. - (Reuters)