Las Ramblas van terrorist shot dead by armed police

● Bomb disposal robot dispatched to approach suspect ● Dead man thought to have killed owner of getaway car

A man thought to be the driver in the Barcelona van attack was shot dead by Spanish police yesterday.

Authorities announced he was also suspected of killing the owner of a hijacked getaway car.

Younes Abouyaaqoub was shot when officers confronted him in Subirats, a rural area about 28 miles west of Barcelona.

A bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach him. Police say they have evidence that Abouyaaqoub, 22, drove the van that ploughed down the city’s Las Ramblas promenade on Thursday last week, killing 13 people and injuring more than 120.

A man thought to be the driver in the Barcelona van attack was shot dead by Spanish police yesterday after authorities announced he also was suspected of killing the owner of a hijacked getaway car.

Younes Abouyaaqoub was shot when officers confronted him in Subirats, a rural area known for its vineyards about 28 miles west of Barcelona, police in Spain’s Catalonia region said. A bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach him.

Abouyaaqoub, 22, had been the target of an international manhunt that had raised fears throughout the region since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona.

Authorities said they now have evidence that Abouyaaqoub drove the van that ploughed down the city’s Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

They said Abouyaaqoub, who was born in Morocco and has Spanish residency, is also suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early on Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Roser Ventura, whose father owns a vineyard between the towns of Sadurni d’anoia and Subirats, said he alerted the regional Catalan police when they spotted a car crossing their property at high speed.

“The police told us to leave the premises and go home. We heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming toward the gas station that is some 600 metres from the property,” Mr Ventura said.

Earlier yesterday, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said investigators have “scientific evidence” showing Abouyaaqoub drove the speeding van in Las Ramblas and killed the owner of a hijacked car on Thursday night.

He said the suspect walked through Barcelona for about 90 minutes after the van attack – through La Boqueria market and nearly to Barcelona University – before hijacking the car from 34-year-old Pau Perez. Abouyaaqoub is believed to have made his getaway in the stolen car with Mr Perez’s body inside.

Mr Perez was parking his car, a Ford Focus, between 6:10pm and 6:20pm. Abouyaaqoub stabbed him before 6:32pm, put him in the car’s rear seats and drove away, Mr Trapero said.

Mr Trapero said Mr Perez was already dead when Abouyaaqoub then rammed the car through a police checkpoint minutes later and police opened fire on his car.

The suspect ran over a police officer as the car evaded the checkpoint. At about 7pm, police found the car and Mr Perez’s body nearly two miles from the checkpoint, near Sant Just Desvern, a town west of Barcelona, but Abouyaaqoub was nowhere to be found.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais published images yesterday of what it said was Abouyaaqoub leaving the van attack site on foot. The three images show a slim man wearing sunglasses walking through La Boqueria market.

Abouyaaqoub escaped and had not returned to his home in Ripoll, said Mr Trapero. The manhunt for him reached well beyond Spain’s borders. Four other suspects have been arrested.

Regional authorities said yesterday that 48 people were still in hospital after the attacks, eight of them in critical condition.

Abouyaaqoub was believed to be the lone attacker on the run by Sunday. Authorities had not confirmed his identity because they were having difficulty identifying the remains of at least two extremists who died on Wednesday in an explosion at a house in Alcanar.

The explosion destroyed the house, but police found remnants of more than 100 butane gas tanks and materials needed for the TATP explosive, which has been used previously by IS militants.

Those discoveries, and reports that Abouyaaqoub had rented three vans, suggested the militant cell was making plans for an even more massive attack on the city.

“The police told us to leave the premises and go home. We heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming”

ROSER VENTURA