Newspaper executive wounded

By Alberto Letona
The Associated Press

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain - An attacker shot a Spanish newspaper executive seven times yesterday in the first killing blamed on the Basque group ETA since voters overwhelming rejected separatist bloodshed in a recent election.

Santiago Oleaga, 52, was shot three times in the head, three times in the back and once in the neck in a hospital parking lot in the northern coastal city of San Sebastian, police said. He was undergoing therapy for a shoulder injury at the hospital and did not have police protection.

Oleaga was chief financial officer of the newspaper El Diario Vasco, owned by Grupo Correo, a news conglomerate based in the Basque country that has been outspoken in criticizing ETA.

An hour later, a car police believe was the getaway vehicle blew up elsewhere in the city without causing casualties.

No one took responsibility for the shooting. But authorities immediately blamed ETA. The group, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, has claimed the slayings of 800 people since beginning its violent campaign in 1968 for an independent state comprising the Basque regions of Spain and France.

Oleaga is the eighth person killed this year and the first since regional parliamentary elections May 13. Euskal Herritarrok, the party seen as ETA's political wing, lost half its 14 seats in the vote for the 75-member Basque parliament.

The winner, with 33 seats, was the Basque Nationalist Party, which favors independence by peaceful means. The vote was seen as a rejection of violence by Basques.

Acting Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe condemned the ETA, saying the group was ignoring the poor electoral showing of its supporters in the region, called "Euskadi" in Basque.

"ETA wants to recover its lost votes by killing the citizens of Euskadi," Ibarretxe said.