General dies from ETA blast injuries

Damage caused by an explosion on Tuesday from an ETA bombing

MADRID, Spain - A Spanish general wounded a month ago in a bomb blast blamed on Basque separatists has died from his injuries.

General Justo Oreja Pedraza, 63, suffered serious burns to 50 percent of his body in the June 28 explosion.

He was leaving his apartment in Madrid when the bomb, hidden in a knapsack and strapped to a bicycle, was detonated by remote control.

The general had been working as a lawyer for the Defence Ministry.

The bomb contained two kilos, 4.5 pounds, of explosives and the force of the bomb damaged about 70 apartments in six difference buildings. The Basque separatist group ETA has claimed responsibility for the attack, which injured 15 other people.

EXTRA INFORMATION In-depth:Violence in Spain

With Oreja Pedraza's death, ETA is now blamed for killing 35 people since the group ended a 14-month cease-fire in January 2000.

Also on Saturday, the second bomb in as many days exploded at a savings bank in Barcelona, popoliceaid.

Both explosions in Barcelona were caused by bombs made from gas canisters.

On Friday, three people were slightly injured when an explosion damaged the same branch of La Caixa bank, in what police said was probably the work of a radical Catalan group.

Previous small bomb attacks on bank buildings in the Catalan capital have been linked to Spain's outlawed Marxist group GRAPO, or The First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group.

Meanwhile, ETA confirmed in two Basque newspapers that Olaya Castresana, a 22-year-old woman who blew herself up by accident earlier in the week while handling explosives, was a member of the organisation.

As many as nine people were injured in that explosion. The Interior Ministry says the explosives Castresana was manipulating were to be used in attacks on tourist targets along Spain's popular Mediterranean coast.

A day after Castresana's death, police defused a powerful car bomb parked at the Malaga airport in la Costa del Sol, a region in southern Spain that draws more than a million tourists each year.

ETA has been fighting since 1968 to carve an independent Basque homeland out of lands straddling northern Spain and southwest France.

The campaign of shootings and bombings has left more than 800 people dead.