Spanish military doctor shot dead

MADRID, Spain -- A Spanish military doctor was shot dead on Monday in an attack the Spanish broadcast media and government immediately blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.

If confirmed to be the work of ETA, it would be the 15th killing blamed on the separatists this year.

The dead physician, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Munoz Carinano, 58, was shot twice on Monday afternoon in his private practice in the southern city of Seville. Carinano was a well-known ear, nose and throat specialist and his patients included well-known show business personalities.

INTERACTIVE ETA-related violence in 2000 Timeline of the ETA campaign     MESSAGE BOARD Terror in Spain

Police said one person had been arrested and another man, wounded in the shoulder, fled, sparking a manhunt in the city.

The last killing blamed on ETA occurred in another southern city, Granada, last week, when a senior state prosecutor in southern Spain was shot and killed.

Although ETA has claimed responsibility for 12 of the attacks blamed on the group this year, it did not claim to have carried out the most recent ones, including Monday's. The group is known to take responsibility for such attacks days or weeks after they occur.

The rebels have fought for 32 years to carve an independent Basque homeland out of lands straddling northern Spain and south-west France and have been blamed for about 800 killings.

After a 14-month unilateral rebel ceasefire ended late last year, the killings have resumed and continued, despite recent arrests of some three-dozen suspected ETA members or aides in recent weeks.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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Euskal Herritarrok (in Basque)
Association for Peace in the Basque Country

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