Spain ? The Basque separatist group’s No. 1 leader was nabbed in France as he slept late last year. His replacement lasted only a matter of weeks. Over the past couple of years, Spanish and French police have put most of ETA’s leadership in jail, and with each arrest comes new claims the group has been decapitated.

Yet nothing authorities do seems enough to kill the insurgency, which proved in Wednesday’s massive car bombing that it is still a dangerous and sometimes lethal force.

The bomb — 440 pounds of explosives — did not kill anyone, but it shattered a 14-story barracks housing Spanish civil guard police and their families. Some 41 children were among those sleeping in the barracks and surrounding buildings when the blast went off at 4 a.m. (9 p.m. CDT Tuesday), according to Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba. Sixty people were injured, mostly by flying glass.