Police in Portugal are investigating whether an arms cache discovered in a holiday villa may be evidence of a terrorist launch base being set up.

When the villa’s owner signalled that her tenants had abandoned the property, weapons and explosives were found. Suspicions centred on the Basque armed separatist group ETA.

This was in Óbidos, a tourist resort some 100km north of the capital Lisbon.

Two suspected members of ETA were arrested across the border in Spain last month, found to have been carrying explosives, weapons, false number plates and forged documents.

In a bloody campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain over four decades, ETA has murdered more than 800 people.

The group is on the European Union and US blacklists of organisations considered as terrorists.

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