Spain on alert as terror strikes another major European city
Online plea to help find 7- year- old after his mother is found in hospital
As police last night were searching for the driver of the van who ploughed through pedestrians on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard, the family of a 7- year- old boy were searching for him after he was separated from his mother who was injured during the attack.
The attack, claimed by Isis ( Islamic State), broke the peace of a warm summer afternoon in a packed, tourist- friendly area of Barcelona at the peak of vacation season. At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 people were hurt. They came from at least 24 nationalities.
Julian Cadman and his mother Jom, who live in Sydney, were visiting the city for a wedding. They were out among the other tourists taking in the sights when terror struck.
Witnesses said the white vehicle zigzagged at high speed down Las Ramblas, ramming pedestrians and cyclists, sending some hurtling through the air and leaving bodies strewn in its wake.
The driver was seen running from the scene and was at large last night.
Jom Cadman was injured and taken to hospital but it is not known what happened to Julian.
Julian’s father and Jom’s husband, Andrew Cadman, was yesterday on his way to Barcelona. He arrived at work in Sydney yesterday to hear news of the attack on the radio. His boss, Scott Bowman, said Andrew was able to find out his wife was in hospital but that nobody knew where his son was.
Meanwhile, family members sent out pleas for help on social media.
“My cousin, Julian Alessandro Cadman is missing. Please like and share,” his cousin, George Cadman, wrote on Facebook.
The injured and dead came from 24 different countries, the Catalan Government said, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines. Spanish media said several children were killed.
Hours after the Barcelona attack, police shot and killed five people wearing fake bomb belts who staged a car attack in the seaside town of Cambrils, about 130km to the south of Barcelona.
A woman died and five people, including a police officer, were injured when the attackers ploughed into a group of tourists and locals with their blue Audi 3. The five suspects were later killed in a shootout with police.
Catalonia’s Interior Minister, Joaquim Forn, said the five were wearing fake bomb belts, “but very well made, and it wasn’t until the bomb squad carried out the controlled explosion of one that they could determine they were fakes”.
Cambrils Mayor Cami Mendoza said the town had taken precautions after the Barcelona attack, but that the suspects had centred their assault on a narrow path to Cambrils' boardwalk, which is usually packed with locals and tourists.
Forn said the attacks, and an explosion in the southwest town of Alcanar, were connected.
“We are not talking about a group of one or t wo people, but rather a numerous group,” he said.
Josep Lluis Trapero, a senior Catalan police official, told reporters that t wo men were arrested, a Moroccan national and a Spanish citizen from the enclave of Melilla. A third suspect was arrested in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll.
Isis said on its Amaq news agency: “The perpetrators of the Barcelona attack are soldiers of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting coalition states” — a reference to a US- led coalition against the Sunni militant group.
Spain has several hundred soldiers in Iraq providing training to local forces in the fight against Isis, but they are not involved in ground operations.
The Isis claim could not immediately be verified.
If the involvement of Islamist militants is confirmed, it would be the latest in a string of attacks in the past 13 months in which they have used vehicles to bring carnage to the streets of European cities. Las Ramblas is a key boulevard in Barcelona, a promenade which is popular with tourists and where the city traditionally celebrates the Barcelona football team’s victories.
Las Ramblas was created in the 19th century, when Barcelona destroyed the city walls which were limiting its growth and built a promenade to unite the upper part of the city with the sea.
The road gave rise to the Barcelonian word “ramblear”, which means to promenade on Las Ramblas.
The key artery was once packed with the Catalan city’s wealthy — on their way to the theatre — and with visiting American marines, local prostitutes, flower and bird merchants, and vendors from the city’s famed Boqueria market.
Although Barcelonians have long since given Las Ramblas over to the tourists, the historic promenade, which runs from the Plaza de Catalunya to the old port, holds a special place in the city’s heart.
It is home to the city’s political, spiritual and commercial seats of power — the Catalan Government and Barcelona’s municipal council, the Sagrada Familia cathedral and the large church of Santa Maria.
Spanish reports claimed Oukabir was born in Morocco in 1989 and legally resident in Spain. But in what is believed to be his Facebook profile, he says he was from Marseille, southern France, but living in Ripoll in Catalonia.
On Wednesday, he changed his profile picture to one depicting him sunbathing on a beach. Wearing white headphones, he posed for the picture on a blue towel laid out next to a pink one.
It is unclear whether the photographer was male or female but police were understood to be investigating if he either came to the city with a woman, or met one when he arrived.
His profile, on which he calls himself Driss Oukabir Soprano, states that he has been in a relationship since December 2013 and contains links to more than 700 friends, several of whom were likely relatives with the same Oukabir surname. Within minutes of his name being released, the profile was flooded with vitriolic messages, condemning him for any apparent involvement. The profile was later removed from the internet.
Over the last few weeks, Oukabir posted links to several hip hop music videos on YouTube.
One of them, he described as being “for my brother”.
In one video, an all- boy band, who sing in French, are seen celebrating and singing about vodka. In another, they revel in their love for expensive sports cars and women.