More Eta suspects held in France

Several passers-by were injured in the Santona blast

Police in France have arrested two suspected members of the Basque separatist group Eta. Eight have now been held in the past two days.

The arrests followed three weekend car bombs blamed on the group, one of which killed a Spanish army officer, Conde de la Cruz.

His funeral was held on Tuesday, attended by the Spanish prime minister.

Spain's interior minister said the weekend attacks were apparently planned and prepared in France.

It is not clear if Tuesday's arrests - in the village of Trelins, in the Loire region - were directly linked to the bomb attacks.

The detainees - a man and a woman, both in their 30s - had apparently been trying to steal a car, police said.

They were armed with handguns and had false identity papers, police added.

On Monday, police in south-west France detained six suspected Basque militants following an investigation into the financing of terror attacks.

Eta has traditionally used France as a base for its activities, and the Spanish Interior Minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, said on Monday that appeared to be the case with the weekend's car bombings.

"We are working on the hypothesis that the three cars that exploded were stolen, loaded [with explosives] and prepared in France," he said.

Police last year discovered a bomb-making factory in the southern French town of Cahors, and in December a Spanish civil guard was shot dead by suspected Eta members while conducting a reconnaissance mission in France.