Hooded protesters destroyed a bus and a bomb damaged offices in northern Spain overnight on Thursday after an alleged member of the Basque separatist group ETA died during a police chase, officials said.
The explosion at about 2am local time on Friday extensively damaged the offices of a building company in Guernica, a spokesperson for the Basque autonomous government said.
Residents from apartments on the upper floors were evacuated while police inspected the building, she said.
There were no reports of injuries and no one has claimed responsibility, she added.
The explosion followed a night of incidents in the Basque region provoked by the death on Wednesday of Imanol Gomez Gonzalez, an ETA suspect, near Cahors in south-west France.
Gomez (27) lost control of his car and crashed trying to escape from gendarmes during a road check.
A weapon and documents in the car led police to believe he was linked to ETA. Spanish counter-terrorism police said Gomez had been a fugitive since 2003.
In San Sebastian, after police broke up a demonstration protesting Gomez’s death, people wearing hoods threw Molotov cocktails at a bus, destroying it completely, the Basque government spokesperson said.
Police in Bilbao reported a number of fires in rubbish bins, which they said were the habitual expressions of ”urban violence” by young radical separatists.
ETA, blamed for more than 800 deaths in its 37-year campaign for a Basque state covering parts of Spain and France, has waged a strategy of low-level violence for the past two years.
On July 12, the group claimed responsibility for a series of explosions at a power plant near Bilbao, preceded by a series of telephone warning calls. — Sapa-AFP