Spain on alert as tributes paid to slain officers

THE leaders of Spain’s main political parties paid tribute to two slain police officers as security forces guarded against a fresh attack on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the armed Basque group ETA.

Authorities blame ETA for an explosion that killed the officers near a police barracks outside a base in the resort town of Palmanova on the island of Majorca and a car bomb that wounded more than 60 people in the northern city of Burgos on Wednesday.

An Interior Ministry official in Mallorca told reporters police “were still working on the hypothesis that the terrorists had not abandoned the island and were holed up in an apartment waiting for the situation to cool down a bit so that they can get out”.