Car bomb hits northern Spanish varsity; 17 wounded

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A car bomb exploded on Thursday in a campus parking lot at a university in northern Spain, wounding 17, in an attack that officials said
followed a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA.

The explosion happened at the University of Navarra in the city of Pamplona at around 1000 GMT, a member of staff at the university said.

"There were other small explosions after the fire set off the fuel tanks in the parked cars nearby," Bernardino Leon, a University of Navarra professor, told the Antena 3 TV channel.

Some 400 people were evacuated from nearby buildings after the explosion, although the rest of the campus continued to function as normal, said the university's director of communication Jesus Diaz.

The blast comes two days after the arrest of four suspected members of armed Basque separatist group ETA, three of whom were picked up in Navarra.

Spain's interior ministry said the group "were ready to carry an attack, probably in Navarra."

The university said they had received no warning before the blast but the regional traffic department (DYA) said they got a call at 0853 GMT from a man claiming to represent ETA and speaking in Spanish.

"We had a call in the name of ETA to say that a car was going to going to explode at a university, but without specifying whether it was in Navarra or in Pamplona," a DYA employee said.

Calls to DYA have traditionally been used by ETA to warn of imminent explosions in the Basque country.

Among other demands, radical Basque separatists want to include the separate autonomous region of Navarra in Basque Country.

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