PARIS -- Members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA killed a French police officer in a shootout near Paris on Tuesday night, the French authorities said Wednesday. Officials said it was the first time a member of France's security forces had been killed by the group, which operates primarily in Spain but has long used southwestern France as a staging area for its activities. Under increasing pressure from French and Spanish law enforcement agencies, ETA has in recent months moved some of its operations deeper into France.In a statement on Wednesday, President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that the officer had been killed "during an exchange of gunfire with an ETA terrorist commando unit."
On Tuesday night, the Paris prosecutor's office said, the police stopped to question four people seen filling the gas tanks of four vehicles at the side of a road in Villiers-en-Bière, a village 30 miles southeast of Paris. Although the police officers did not realize it at the time, the four cars were among six that had been stolen earlier in the evening from a nearby dealership.
For reasons that remain unclear, the officers decided to arrest the four people and were placing them in handcuffs when the two other stolen vehicles arrived at the scene. Occupants of those vehicles began shooting at the police, who returned fire, according to the Paris prosecutor's office, killing the officer. All but one of the suspects escaped.
The police arrested the remaining suspect, a 27-year-old man who reportedly spoke Basque and presented himself as an ETA operative. They also recovered what appeared to be the weapon that killed the officer, a .357 Magnum with its serial number scratched out, Agence France-Presse reported.
The French and Spanish police have detained 34 people believed to be ETA operatives this year, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry, and several of the group's top military and political leaders have been arrested in the past year. Also, large stocks of weapons and explosives belonging to the group have been seized in France in recent months.
Many experts say they believe that ETA has been seriously weakened by the recent arrests and that it has been split by a conflict between its militant and political wings. In regional elections a year ago, a pro-Spanish government came to power in the Basque region of Spain for the first time in 30 years.
Classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, ETA seeks an independent state in the Basque regions of northern Spain and southwestern France. Since its inception in 1959, the militant group has been blamed for more than 825 deaths, primarily in bomb attacks against security officers.