Basque militants have been blamed for the car bombing that killed a police inspector Friday near Bilbao, officials said.

A spokesman for the Basque regional police said Antonio Eduardo Pueyes Garcia was in his parked car in the town of Arrigorriaga when the vehicle exploded, The New York Times reported.

"The characteristics of the attack pointed to it being the work of ETA," the spokesman said.

ETA, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, has been blamed for killing more than 825 people in its years-old campaign for an independent Basque homeland. In recent years, police operations in Spain and France have captured a number of top ETA militants.