A powerful car bomb killed two people, including a six-year-old girl, when it exploded outside a police barracks in a Spanish tourist resort on Sunday in an attack officials blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA. About 25 people were injured, four of them seriously, in the attack in Santa Pola near the southern city of Alicante, a local government official said. A Red Cross spokeswoman said the injured could number as many as 40.

The girl, the daughter of a Civil Guard police officer, died in hospital, the spokesman said. State radio said she was killed in her home when shock waves from the blast toppled furniture on top of her.

A 50-year-old man identified as Cecilio Gallego also was killed, the spokesman said.

"ETA kills whenever it can, and when it doesn't kill it is only because the security forces have taken apart their commandos...Now they have attacked a little girl, the daughter of a Civil Guard (policeman)," Interior Minister Angel Acebes told Antena 3 television after visiting the scene.

"Many homes were destroyed, but they were unoccupied. Otherwise the number of victims would have multiplied," Acebes said.

The girl is the youngest fatality since ETA resumed violence in January 2000 following a 14-month cease-fire.

ETA has killed more than 800 people since 1968 to press its demands for an independent state in Basque areas of northern Spain and southwestern France. It is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.

Many of the injured were waiting for a bus near the police station in Santa Pola, a major fishing port.

"There was total chaos," town councilor Adolfo Castro told state radio. "We helped the injured. The girl came out -- we don't know where she was -- and she had a hole in her left temple.

"There was a lady with an open wound on her head. We found a man on the ground with a cut from his throat on down, you could see his aorta. The wives of the Civil Guard were very affected, they had bruises all over," he said.

Television pictures showed walking wounded and dazed passers-by in the debris-filled street. Numerous windows were blown out.

PHOTO CAPTION

Plainclothes police officers examine the remains of a car bomb in Santa Pola, southeastern Spain, Sunday Aug. 4, 2002 after it exploded, killing two and injuring at least 25, police and a government official said. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)