Spanish police hunt six Eta suspects

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Six alleged ETA members who could be related to the last terrorist attacks. Left to right, Itziar Moreno Martinez, Alberto Machain Beraza, Iratxe Ya ez Ortiz de Barron, Oroitz Gurruchaga Gogorza, Ivan Saez de Jauregui Ortigosa and Joanes Larretxea Mendiola. Photograph: Ministerio Del Interior/EPA

Holidaymakers in Spain were told today to be on the lookout for half a dozen members of the violent Basque separatist group Eta as police scoured the country for a further two possible car bombs.

A countrywide hunt was launched as police published photographs of six named suspects, four men and two women in their early to mid-20s, thought to belong to Eta cells that planted bombs in Spain this week.

Two of the suspects were reportedly spotted on the holiday island of Mallorca shortly before a bomb killed two policemen in the busy resort town of Calvia yesterday.

Authorities said they thought the Eta cell was still hiding out among the hundreds of thousands of tourists on an island where Spain's King Juan Carlos starts his summer holidays today.

"We are going to make it as difficult as possible for them to leave the island," said Ramón Socías, the government delegate on the Balearic islands.

The hunt came amid concern that Eta, which groups its attacks to maximise their impact, might have another bomb ready to follow those that exploded on Mallorca and in the northern city of Burgos on Wednesday.

A tipoff from France has also put Spanish police on the lookout for two small vans that may have been turned into car bombs. The vans, a white Renault Kangoo and a Citroen Berlingo, were stolen recently in France and fit the profile of Eta's favoured bomb vehicles.

With holiday resorts obviously in the group's sights after the Mallorca bomb, the Foreign Office has reiterated its warnings to British travellers to Spain.

"There is a high threat from terrorism in Spain," it warned. "Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers."

Terrorism experts said Eta had traditionally targeted summer holiday resorts but had now changed tactics, preferring large, spectacular attacks to the small bombs it once planted on beaches.

This week's attacks raised questions about whether Spanish police have become too relaxed about their own security following recent successes against Eta.

The group's three victims so far this year have all been policemen killed by limpet bombs attached to their own vehicles. Although Eta has become skilled at disguising these bombs, police are under instructions to check the undersides of their vehicles.

"We will examine all our protocols to see if we have to improve something," said Socías.

Both the Burgos Civil Guard barracks blown up on Wednesday, in an attack that injured 65 people including half a dozen children, and the Civil Guard post in Calvia, Mallorca, had been reconnoitred by Eta in recent years.

Police knew the Burgos barracks had been marked as a target and that at least one Civil Guard officer in Calvia had been tailed, with a report on his daily routine sent to Eta bosses living in France.

There was some doubt, too, about whether the Eta members who planted the Calvia bomb were still on the island. Eta often adds a security timer to its limpet bombs, allowing them to remain attached to a car for up to 24 hours before they explode.

Anti-terrorist officials continue to insist, however, that they have Eta on the run. "It is pretty much burning its boats with these attacks," one told El País newspaper. "They are putting everything they have got into this."

Terrorism experts pointed out that, while Eta carried out 24 attacks in the first seven months of last year, it has launched only 10 so far this year.

"Eta is no stronger than it was a year ago," said Florencio Domínguez, author of several books on Eta. "It is just that these attacks have a strong impact."

Despite high-profile police successes against Eta, however, at least a dozen young activists are known to have joined its ranks over the past eight months.

Ten of them left Spain to join Eta, which keeps most of its activists in France, in December. One has already been caught. Police identified a further two newly-incorporated Eta members in March.