Spain arrests ETA suspects

Spanish police arrested five people yesterday on suspicion of offering logistical support to the Basque guerilla group ETA, the Interior Ministry said.

"As suspected members of ETA's support infrastructure in (the Basque region of) Vizcaya, they gave cover to fugitives to help them escape to France and hosted... terrorists entering our country," the ministry said in a statement.

The suspects, four men and a woman, were arrested in the Basque country and in the northern province of Leon, the ministry said.

"Police have seized diaries, computers, ETA membership documents... material that is being analysed as the operation is not over," Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told reporters during a visit to the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela.

ETA, listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States, has killed nearly 850 people since 1968 in a bombing and shooting campaign for an independent state in the Basque areas of northern Spain and southwestern France.

In recent weeks it has opted for economic sabotage, setting off small bombs at beach resort towns last month and bombing power lines this month.