BILBAO, Spain -- Two Basque terrorists Wednesday shot and killed the director of a nuclear power plant under construction and wounded his teenage son in the latest violence aimed at crippling the $1.6 billion installation, police said.
Angel Pascual Mugica, head of the Lemoniz power plant that the Basque separatist organization, ETA, has pledged to shut down, was riddled with bullets in his automobile in a street outside his home which was blocked with a stolen car. He died instantly.
The killers slightly wounded Pascual's son Diego, 16, who was seated beside his father when their car pulled out of the garage. The terrorists fled in the stolen car in a hail of bullets from the victim's bodyguards.
Police said one of the gunmen appeared to have been hit by Pascual's four power company bodyguards who jumped out of their car and opened fire. The get-away car was found by police shortly after the attack with blood stains on the back seat.
ETA (Basque Land and Liberty) has waged a campaign of killings, bombings and death threats to stop work on the $1.6 billion Westinghouse-supplied Lemoniz plant, which it sees as an exploitation of the region.
In Madrid, Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo met in emergency session with five key ministers to draw up new anti-terror rules for the Basque country. He vowed to complete the power plant despite the latest ETA terror wave that began two weeks ago when the separatist organization hit police stations in grenade attacks and blew up a Madrid telephone exchange.
'The murder... is an example of the irrationality and savageness of terrorist gangs and a direct attack on the will of the immense majority of the Basques,' a government statement said.
Work on the plant -- scheduled to begin generating electricty next year -- slowed to a standstill after ETA killed its chief engineer, Jose Maria Ryan, Feb. 6, 1981, a week after they kidnapped him.
When Ryan was killed, Basques staged the biggest mass protests yet against ETA, and a regional government official said similar marches might be mounted now.
Pascual became the 15th victim of political violence in Spain this year, and the fourth since ETA two weeks ago pledged to drive security forces out of the region.
