A car bomb exploded Tuesday in the Basque city of Bilbao, injuring at least one person, local media reported.

The bomb went off under the car of a bodyguard, seriously injuring him. A local radio station earlier said the bodyguard had been killed, but the interior ministry later confirmed that he was seriously injured and is now receiving medical treatment.

The bodyguard was assigned to a Socialist member of the council of the Basque village of Galdakao, near Bilbao. The bomb went off at about 1135 GMT in a neighborhood of La Pena, burning the man's face and injuring other parts of his body.

Though there was no immediate announcement of responsibility, police suspected Basque separatist group ETA, which has renewed terrorist attacks in recent months following a government crackdown against it and its political wing Batasuna.

ETA formally called off a March 2006 peace deal with the government in June amid accusations that both sides had failed to implement the agreement. The situation has become particularly tense recently following the arrests of 23 senior members of Batasuna, ETA's political wing, Thursday. Seventeen of them have been jailed.

The most senior Batasuna official still at liberty, Pernando Barrena, has termed the arrests a "declaration of war" and warned of a "new cycle of violence" in Spain.

Just hours before the bombing, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba tightened security measures throughout the country, to prevent possible ETA attacks before or on the National Day holiday Friday.

ETA is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States. During its four-decade fight for independence of the Basque region, it has killed more than 800 people.

(Xinhua News Agency October 10, 2007)