BORDEAUX, France (AFP) - Anti-terrorist police arrested the leader of Spain's armed Basque separatist group ETA in coordinated raids in France and Spain that resulted in weapons caches and several other suspected members being seized, officials said.
French officials said Mikel "Antza" Albizu Iriarte, the political chief of the militant movement, and his girlfriend, Soledad "Anboto" Iparragirre Genetxea, were among 17 people arrested in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region in southwestern France near the Spanish border.
Arms caches were discovered in seven different locations in the region as around 140 specialist officers, including members of France's anti-terrorist brigade and intelligence services, swooped on properties, the French interior ministry said.
Documents and large sums of cash were also seized.
Spanish anti-terrorist officials said a total of 21 people had been arrested in the raids, including a Spanish truckdriver arrested in the central Spanish city of Burgos whose wife was among those grabbed in France. They did not explain the difference with the French arrest figures.
Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said the "major operation" had been "of very high importance".
ETA has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in its violent 36-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.
It has long used parts of southern France as a rear base for its attacks in Spain, but has recently been weakened by coordinated operations by the two nations.
The French interior ministry said of Sunday's raids that "the intelligence work was carried out in close collaboration with the Spanish authorities and in particular the Guardia Civil."
French anti-terrorist investigating magistrate Laurence Le Vert arrived in the town of Urrugne in the region to oversee ongoing searches.
ETA has been relatively quiet this year, since the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that were initially blamed on the Basque separatists before evidence emerged indicating that Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda were responsible for the 191 people killed and nearly 2,000 wounded.
The Basque militant group last year had announced that Spain's economy, in particular its all-important tourism sector, was a priority target. A series of small bomb attacks rocked coastal resorts in northern Spain in August in an apparent campaign to underline that threat.
In September, ETA vowed in a video to continue its armed struggle until its campaign for an independent homeland was won.
"The conflict will end when the rights of our people are recognised and respected," the group said in the video.
It also criticised the French government for doing nothing to help the country's Basque people except "offer them a slow death" and urged Basques in France and Spain to join together to seek independence.
The last fatal attack by ETA was in May 2003, when two policemen were killed in the northern province of Navarra in a car-bomb attack.