A senior police officer was shot and critically wounded early morning in Andoain near San Sebastian, the capital of the northern Spanish Basque region, police have said.
"Everything suggests it was an attack" by ETA, a police spokesman in San Sebastian said.
Joseba Pagazaurtundua, the police chief for Andoain and a local militant Basque socialist, was breakfasting in a bar when he was hit by three or four bullets fired by a masked gunman around 9 a.m. police said.
He was taken to hospital in San Sebastian 15 kilometres away in a critical condition.
The Basque interior ministry said doctors had managed to keep the policeman alive after initial reports said he had died at the scene.
If ETA's suspected involvement in the attack is confirmed, it will be the first strike by the armed separatist group this year.
AFP