A car bomb explosion blamed on the Basque separatists at a university in Pamplona, Spain has wounded 17 people and set a building on fire. No one has claimed responsibility for the Thursday explosion but officials are blaming the Basque separatist group ETA for the attack. The bomb went off in a parking lot at the University of Navarra and broke windows and set cars on fire, AP reported. "ETA has once again displayed its vileness," said Jose Antonio Alonso, spokesman in parliament for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapaptero's Socialist party.
Seventeen people were slightly injured, some of them as a result of flying glass, the Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.
He went on to add that a man who claimed to be speaking for ETA phoned in a warning to the authorities in the Basque capital, Vitoria an hour before the explosion. He had said that the bomb was packed in a white Peugeot and was due to go off at 'the university campus.'
Unfortunately the police thought he was referring to the university in Vitoria and carried out a search there, not knowing that the bomb would go off without warning in Pamplona, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Vitoria. "Clearly, whoever placed the bomb gave a warning and either intentionally did not give all the information or made a mistake,'' Perez Rubalcaba said.
Earlier on Tuesday Spanish police had arrested three suspected members of ETA in Pamplona and another in Valencia. However Rubalcaba refrained from speculating on whether or not Pamplona had been targeted as a result of the arrests.
Navarra borders on the Basque region and is home to many Basque-speakers and ETA says that it should be part of the independent homeland it wants to create.
ETA called a cease-fire in March 2006 but resumed attacks in December 2006 after peace talks with Zapatero's government failed. Since then, it has been blamed for seven deaths, three of them in 2008.