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The car bomb caused significant damage and one person suffered an ear injury, television broadcaster EITB, which managed to stay on air despite the explosion at its headquarters in central Bilbao city, said in its early afternoon news report. "They have tried to silence one of this country''s media outlets," EITB director Bingen Zupiria told reporters outside the building later.

The caller gave no reason for the attack but Basque regional government spokeswoman Miren Azkarate said, "EITB has been an ETA target for a longtime." Several other media like Basque newspaper DEIA or Antena 3 Television outlets are housed in the building, including a bureau of El Mundo newspaper.

The EITB''s board of directors gathered for urgent reunion and offered full support to the workers. EITB''s officials asked the journalists "to reaffirm their commitment with ethical human rights". They also showed their solidarity with the companies sharing the attacked building.

Although most of ETA''s victims in the past have been security force members, the group has regularly targeted political parties, bank, businesses, public transport, as well as the media. "There''s no point in reading anything special into this attack," EITB editor Inigo Herze told some journalists. "ETA attacks anyone that doesn''t believe in what it believes in".

With a population of just under 1 million, Bilbao is the Basque region''s main city and home to one of the Guggenheim Museums. Police in the city said agents followed tips from the caller Wednesday and found the owner of the vehicle used in the attack tied to a tree in some woods just outside the city. "ETA can attack but it will lose all the battles," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Wednesday. "The only thing it will achieve will be to put the terrorists in jail quicker."

"This is an attack against all Basque society because this is public television paid for by people''s taxes," Antonio Basagoiti, head of the regional chapter of the conservative opposition Popular Party, told reporters. "ETA wants to pressure us in to accepting what they want: independence, socialism, backwardness and a return to the Stone Age," Basagoiti said.

ETA has suffered a wave of arrests of its suspected members in recent months in France and the Basque Country. Suspected leader, Aitzol Iriondo, was arrested in Iparralde-northern Basque Country on Dec. 8, three weeks after his alleged predecessor, Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, alias Txeroki, was caught in the neighboring country.

ETA has killed more than 825 people since 1968 in its campaign for Basque independence. The group declared a cease-fire in March 2006 that led to peace talks, but it broke the truce with a car bomb Dec. 30, 2006, at Madrid''s Barajas airport, killing two people.