Five blasts in northern Spain, ETA blamed

By Emma Pinedo MADRID (Reuters) - Four small bombs exploded at popular seaside resorts in Cantabria northern Spain on Sunday, after warning calls from the Basque separatist group ETA and an explosion outside a Barclays bank near Bilbao. One woman was hurt by a flying stone and another treated for shock. The attacks marked the beginning of ETA's traditional summer bombing campaign, which targets holiday resorts as part of the group's four-decade struggle for an independent Basque state. Many European schools have begun their summer holidays and the attacks are meant to hurt tourism, one of Spain's biggest foreign income earners. Spain's Socialist government says ETA has been severely weakened by a string of arrests, but the guerrilla group has staged more than a dozen attacks and killed two people since the beginning of the... [read full story]