Toll in Barcelona Rises to 17; Error Cited by Basques

MADRID — Two more people died of severe burns Sunday, bringing to 17 the number killed in a bombing at a Barcelona supermarket that Basque separatists said was a mistake.

“We admit, in keeping with our revolutionary honesty, the serious error committed in carrying out this operation,” the group ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) said in a call to the Basque newspaper Egin.

“We can only assure that we shall use all available means to guarantee the selectivity of our actions so that such events (killing of innocent victims) will not happen again,” said ETA, which is fighting for an independent Basque state in northern Spain.

ETA said that Friday’s attack went badly, and it expressed condolences to relatives of the victims. But it said responsibility fell on the government for rejecting talks on its demands for self-determination of the Basque country.

A spokesman for the Valle Hebron hospital, where 17 people injured in the blast were in intensive care, said that Felipe Caparros, 44, and Consuelo Ortega, 66, died Sunday from massive burns.