News

French police launched a huge operation on Wednesday to hunt down and capture members of the "suspected ETA commando" responsible for killing one of their own officers near Paris on Tuesday. It is still unclear how many members of the armed group are implicated in the incident, though French authorities do not rule out the possibility that as many as ten were involved.

On Wednesday afternoon, police questioned one person who may have been witness to the attack. French gendarmes also interrogated the only suspect arrested so far in connection with the killing of one of their agents. The deceased officer, Jean Serge Nérin of 52 years, died following a gun attack carried out by various suspected members of ETA, antiterrorist campaign sources inform. He was the father of four children.

The arrested suspect is Joseba Fernández Aspurz, currently wanted by Spain''s National Court, though it is so far not known whether he was one of the authors of Tuesday''s attack.

The shooting took place to the west of Paris in the area of Dammarie-lès-Lys, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, at 7.15pm, though news of the attack was not known until later into the evening.

The attack broke out when French agents went to detain a vehicle traveling at high speed. As police were carrying out a control of the vehicle, other cars appeared on the scene and it least one occupant began shooting at the the murdered agent.

The deceased was wearing a bullet-proof vest, but one projectileentered through his armpit and he died in hospital one hour later as a result of his injuries.

Following a search of the crime scene, police recovered the weapon used by the suspected ETA-members, a magnum with the serial number filed off.

At the time of the attack, the suspected members of the armed group were on the run after attacking a car dealership in the Parisian département of Seine et Marne, where they stole six second hand vehicles.

During the robbery, the perpetrators retrained one employee who had to be taken to hospital.

Paris’ central court antiterrorist division has taken on the investigation into the crime, who are responsible for examining all cases linked with ETA activity in France.

Authorities in Spain, where the Basque separatist rebels have killed more than 850 people, were quick to blame the group."This time France has paid a high price for its collaboration in the fight against ETA, which is so important for our freedom and our security," panish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a news conference.

"I feel just as strongly about the murder of this policeman as I would have done if he had been a member of our own security forces," he said.

ETA members have often used the open border with France to escape detection in Spain and while they do commit crimes, such as theft of vehicles and weapons, they avoid direct confrontation with French police.

However, in recent weeks increased security measures by the French have led to hundreds of arrests and seriously weakened
the group.

At the end of February, the man believed to be ETA''s military leader, Ibon Gogeaskoetxea, was arrested in Normandy along with two suspected accomplices.

First time ETA kills French policeman

The shooting in which the 52-year-old policeman was killed is the fifth armed confrontation carried out by ETA on French security forces since 1996, though the first time an agent has actually died as a result.

Before Tuesday''s attack, the most recent of its kind took place on 8th June 2009 in the area of Saint-Énimie in south-west France, when one policeman was injured following a shoot out with two suspected members of the armed group, who had stolen two vehicles.

UNLIKELY CHANGE IN TACTICS

Tuesday''s killing was unlikely to herald a more aggressive attitude towards the French authorities, according to Juan Aviles, a history professor at Spain''s UNED open university.

Instead, they may be struggling to operate effectively."You get the impression that they''re improvising, that they lack of professionalism as criminals." Until Tuesday, ETA had not claimed a fatal victim since July, when it killed two police officers on the island of Majorca with a bomb.

Polls indicate a significant minority of the inhabitants of the Spanish Basque Country, where Basque language and culture have remained distinct, would like independence, although only a smaller number sympathise with violent groups. In the French Basque Country, the distinctive Basque language is no longer widely spoken and separatist sentiment is weak.