Two top leaders of the Basque separatist group ETA were arrested Sunday along with 19 other group members in a joint French-Spanish raid in southwest France, Spain's police authorities said.

ETA top political leader Mikel Albisu Iriarte, alias Mikel Antza, and his girl friend Soledad Iparragirre Genetxea, one of the leading female ETA members nicknamed Amboto, were among those detained, police said.

Antza, 43, has been the group's political chief since 1993 and is believed to be the mastermind of many notorious terrorist attacks in the past years. Amboto, also 43, is allegedly took part in at least 14 fatal attacks, the authorities said.

The other detainees' identities were not immediately released.

The suspects were seized in Sunday's raids conducted in several towns between Pau and Bayonne in southwestern France. Police also found seven separate stocks of weapons, including rocket launchers, assault fires, munitions and explosives.

Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso described the operation as a heavy blow to ETA.

The Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA), which was founded in 1953 and seeks Basque's separation from Spain, is regarded as a terrorist organization by Spain, the United States and the European Union (EU). It carried out numerous bombings and assassinations which caused hundreds of civilian deaths.

Antza was put on the wanted list of the EU in 2001 and entered the black list of the United States the following year.
 
(Xinhua News Agency October 4, 2004)