‘Cell of 8 or 12’ in Spain terror attacks

BARCELONA: Spanish investigators believe a cell of at least eight people, possibly 12, may have been involved in the terror attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The investigators think the cell was planning to use gas canisters in murderous attacks.

Spanish police shot dead five people after confronting them early yesterday in a town south of Barcelona where hours earlier a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds, killing 13 people instantly and injuring scores of others before fleeing the scene on foot. The number of people killed rose to 14 yesterday, after a woman died in hospital.

Islamic State said the perpetrators had been responding to its call for action by carrying out Thursday’s rampage along Barcelona’s most famous avenue, which was thronged with tourists and stalls at the peak of the summer season.

Bodies were left strewn across the avenue and the authorities said the toll, which included several children, could rise, with more than 100 injured.

The injured and dead came from 34 countries, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan.

Hours later in the early hours of yesterday, as security forces hunted for the van’s driver, police said they had killed five suspects in Cambrils, 120km south along the coast from Barcelona, to thwart another attack.

The five men attempted to drive into tourists on the Cambrils seafront. Their car overturned and some of them began stabbing people. Four were shot dead at the scene and the fifth was killed a few hundred metres away. Police destroyed explosive belts the men had been wearing, though they turned out to be fake.

Police said they had arrested a Moroccan and a man from Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla. A third man was arrested in the town of Ripoll yesterday.

Police said later they had made a fourth arrest.

A Spanish woman was killed in the Cambrils incident while several other civilians and a police officer were injured.

Of the 130 injured in both attacks, 17 were in a critical condition and 30 serious.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, one person was killed in an explosion in a house in a separate town southwest of Barcelona. – Reuters