Gunman kills two police officers in northern Spain

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A masked gunman shot and killed two regional Basque police officers Friday evening in the northern Spanish town of Beasain, government officials said.

The officers were directing traffic when they were shot, police say, by an affiliate of the Basque separatist group ETA in Beasain, 265 miles (424 kilometers) north of Madrid.

One of the officers, a 34-year-old woman and mother of three, died at the scene, according to state radio. The other, a 32-year-old man, died later at a local hospital.

Spanish authorities have blamed ETA -- which stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom -- for the deaths of some 800 people since it began a campaign to create an independent Basque region in northern Spain and southwest France in 1968.

Friday's attack came two days after a booby-trapped banner with a slogan urging Basque separatists to kill police exploded as officers tried to remove it from a park in Bilbao, a Basque port city in northern Spain. The explosion injured two officers.

EXTRA INFORMATION In-depth: The Basque conflict -- Violence in Spain

These officers, like those killed Friday, belonged to the Basque police force, a 7,000-member unit authorized by home-rule powers in Madrid in an attempt to satisfy Basque nationalists in northern Spain.

No one has claimed responsibility for either attack.

But Enrique Villar, the Spanish government's top representative in the region, urged Basques to reject ETA and its claim to be fighting for the liberation of an oppressed people.

"Let's not be naive. The enemy of Spain and the Basque country is ETA, and it is against ETA that we must stand," he said.

Basque regional President Juan Jose Ibarretxe cut short his visit to Prague and rushed home following the latest attack, which he called cowardly.

Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Azna -- in Lima, Peru, for the Ibero-American summit -- also condemned the attack, calling on all Spaniards to unite to defeat terrorism.