Another terrorist attack in Spain foiled
CLOSE CALL 5 suspects wearing ‘fake bomb belts’ shot dead by Spanish police
BARCELONA: Police on Friday shot and killed five people wearing fake bomb belts who staged a car attack in a seaside resort in Spain’s Catalonia region hours after a van plowed into pedestrians on a busy Barcelona promenade, killing at least 14 people and injuring over 100 others.
Authorities said the back-toback vehicle attacks — as well as an explosion earlier this week elsewhere in Catalonia— were connected and the work of a large terrorist group.
Three people were arrested, but the driver of the van used in the Barcelona attack remained at large.
BARCELONA: Police on Friday shot and killed five people wearing fake bomb belts who st aged a car attack in a seaside resort in Spain’s Catalonia region hours after a van plowed into pedestrian son a busy Barcelona promenade, killing at least 14 people and injuring over 100 others.
Authorities said the back-toback vehicle attacks — as well as an explosion earlier this week elsewhere in Catalonia— were connected and the work of a large terrorist group. Three people were arrested, but the driver of the van used in the Barcelona attack remained at large and the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of the latest European rampage claimed by the Islamic State group.
Authorities were still reeling from the Barcelona attack when police in Cambrils, about 130 km to the south, fatally shot five people near the town’s boardwalk who had plowed into a group of tourist sand locals with their blue Audi 3. Six people, including a police officer, were injured.
Catalonia’s interior minister, Joaquim Forn, told Onda Cero radio that the five killed in a subsequent shootout with police were wearing fake bomb belts.
The Cambrils attack came hours after a white van veered onto Barcelona’ s pictures que Las Ra mb las promenade and mo wed down pedestrians, zig-zagging down the strip packed with locals and tourists from around the world.
He told Onda Cero that the Cambrils and Barcelona attacks were being investigated together, as well as a Wednesday night explosion in the town of Alcanar in which one person was killed.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack, saying on its A am aq news agency that the attack was carried out by “soldiers of the Islamic State” in response to the group’s calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition trying to drive it from Syria and Iraq.
Spanish news outlets named one of the detained as Driss Ouk ab ir, but reports said he went to police in Ripoll to report that his identity documents had been stolen. Various Spanish media said the IDs with his name were found in the attack van and that he claimed his brother might have stolen them.