Spain will recruit 500 extra police to fight Basque separatists ETA and Islamist militants in the next four years, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on Tuesday. Including the new recruits, the number of anti-terrorism officers will have increased by 1,800 since the Socialist government took office in 2004, days after Islamist militants killed 191 people by bombing Madrid trains, Rubalcaba told a parliamentary committee. ETA has killed more than 800 people in four decades in its fight for an independent Basque Country composed of part of northern Spain and southern France. Its last fatal attack came on May 14, authorities believe, when a car bomb wrecked a police barracks in the Spanish Basque Country, killing one officer. The government will also provide an additional 800 officers to combat organised crime and another 1,248 staff to tackle domestic violence, Rubalcaba said.
ETA fights for the independence of Basque Country.