ETA rebels bomb Basque newspaper building

MADRID (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside a newspaper plant in northern Spain early on Sunday in an attack police blamed on ETA Basque separatists.

No one was hurt by the blast, at the back of El Correo's printing press building in the Basque town of Zamudio at about 3 a.m. (9 p.m. EDT) on Sunday.

Fifty staff were in the building at the time, the newspaper said on its website (here).

"The bomb at our plant in Zamudio will not stop us printing and will not silence our voice, which speaks for hundreds of thousands of Basques who want to see the end of ETA," El Correo said in an editorial.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that ETA was believed to be behind the attack on El Correo, part of the newspaper group Vocento which controls the conservative national daily ABC.

ETA, which has killed more than 800 people in four decades of armed struggle for Basque independence from Spain, has in the past tried to intimidate local journalists and to extort money from Basque businesses.

The Basque region already has considerable autonomy, and the local government controlled by moderate nationalists wants more.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero broke off talks with ETA in December 2006 after its rebels set off a bomb that killed two people at Madrid airport.

(Reporting by Jason Webb; editing by Andrew Dobbie)