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Ex-councillor shot in Basque area Spain attack halts poll campaign
(about 2 hours later)
A former Socialist town councillor has been shot and killed in Spain's northern Basque region. Spanish politicians have cancelled campaigning ahead of Sunday's general election after the murder of a former town councillor.
The attack in the town of Mondragon came just two days before a general election. Isaias Carrasco, 42, was shot outside his house and died in hospital. Socialist Isaias Carrasco, 42, was shot outside his house in the town of Mondragon in the Basque region.
The Basque separatist group Eta has carried out similar attacks before. Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the Basque separatist group Eta had "assassinated" him.
After the shooting the ruling Socialists and their main rivals, the conservative Popular Party, announced a halt to campaigning. Eta, which ended a 15-month ceasefire in June 2007 after failed peace talks, has carried out similar attacks before.
Mr Carrasco was hit by several bullets. Witnesses said his wife and daughter were with him at the time, the Spanish news website El Pais reported.
No group has said it carried out the attack.No group has said it carried out the attack.
Mr Carrasco was a Socialist candidate in municipal elections in 2007. I looked out of the window and I saw his wife and daughter on top of him shouting 'murderers, murderers'. His chest was covered with blood and they had got blood on them too Witness Witnesses said that Mr Carrasco, who was a Socialist candidate in municipal elections in 2007, was hit by several bullets and died later in hospital.
Spain's Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is seeking a second term in Sunday's election. His wife and daughter were reportedly with him at the time of the attack.
"I looked out of the window and I saw his wife and daughter on top of him shouting 'murderers, murderers'. His chest was covered with blood and they had got blood on them too," a woman was quoted by Reuters news agency as telling TV station CNN+.
Hiatus
After the shooting the ruling Socialists, led by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and their main rivals, the conservative Popular Party, announced a halt to all political rallies on what should have been the last day of campaigning.
Mr Zapatero, who is seeking to win a second term in office, broke off peace talks with Eta in December 2006, after two people died in a bombing by the group at the Madrid airport car park.
Four years ago, the Socialists benefited from a late surge in support in the wake of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people.
That attack, which was initially blamed on Eta, was in fact the work of Islamist extremists.
Hundreds killed
For more than three decades Eta has waged a bloody campaign for independence for the seven regions in northern Spain and south-west France that Basque separatists claim as their own.
Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna, the group's full name, stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom.
It first emerged in the 1960s as a student resistance movement bitterly opposed to General Franco's repressive military dictatorship, under which the distinctive Basque culture suppressed.
Eta's violent campaign has led to more than 800 deaths, many of them members of the Guardia Civil, Spain's national police force, and both local and national politicians who are opposed to Eta's separatist demands.