IS claims Barcelona attack
13 dead as picturesque tourist destination becomes killing zone; 2nd van strike foiled
BARCELONA, Spain — A van veered onto a promenade Thursday and barreled down the busy walkway in central Barcelona, swerving back and forth as it mowed pedestrians down and turned a picturesque tourist destination into a bloody killing zone. Thirteen people were killed and 100 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in what authorities called a terror attack.
Hours later, the Catalan police said they foiled a second van attack.
The late afternoon attack in the city’s Las Ramblas district left victims sprawled in the historic street, spattered with blood or writhing in pain from broken limbs. Others were ushered inside shops by officers with their guns drawn or fled in panic, screaming and carrying young children in their arms.
“It was clearly a terror attack, intended to kill as many people as possible,” Josep Lluis Trapero, a senior police official for Spain’s Catalonia region told reporters late Thursday.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, saying in a statement on its Aamaq news
agency that the attack was carried out by “soldiers of the Islamic State” in response to the extremist group’s calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition trying to drive it from Syria and Iraq.
Early Friday, Catalan police posted a tweet saying they shot and killed five suspect in a seaside resort town about 62 miles south of Barcelona. They said officers “shot down the perpetrators” to “respond to a terrorist attack.” They also said six civilians were injured in Cambrils but didn’t immediately say how. Local media said the attackers had tried to drive a vehicle into pedestrians when they were fired onby police.
It wasn’t immediately clear from the tweet if the fiveshot were suspects in the Las Ramblas attack or were allegedly targeting another location.
The regional police also said the five suspects were carrying bomb belts, which have been detonated by the force’s bomb squad.
The force says it is working on the theory that the Cambrils suspects were linked to the Barcelona attack, as well as to a Wednesday night gas explosion in the town of Alcanar in which oneperson was killed.
The Catalan regional government said citizens from 24 countries were among the people killed and injured during the Barcelona van attack.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the killings a “savage terrorist attack” and said Spaniards “are not just united in mourning, but especially in the firm determination to beat those who want to rob us of our values and our way of life.”
After the afternoon attack, Las Ramblas went into lockdown. Swarms of officers brandishing guns launched a manhunt in the downtown district, ordering stores and cafes and public transport to shut down.
Several hours later authorities reported two arrests, one a Spanish national from Melilla, a Spanish-run Mediterranean seafront enclave in North Africa, and the other a Moroccan. They declined to identify them.
Mr. Trapero said neither of them was the van’s driver, who remained at large after abandoning the van and fleeing on foot. The arrests took place in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll and in Alcanar.
Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and other news outlets named one of the detained as Driss Oukabir, a French citizen of Moroccan origin. Media outlets ran photographs of Mr. Oukabir theysaid police had issued to identify one of the suspects.
Barcelona is the latest European city to experience a terror attack carried out using a vehicle as a weapon to target a popular tourist destination, after similar attacks in France, Germany, Swedenand Britain.
Thursday’s bloodshed was Spain’s deadliest attack since 2004, when al-Qaida-inspired bombers killed 192 people in coordinated assaults on Madrid’s commuter trains. In the years since, Spanish authorities have arrested nearly 200 jihadis. The only deadly attacks were bombings claimed by the Basque separatist group ETA that killed five people over the past decadebut declared a cease-fire in 2011.
Hoursafter Thursday’s attack, the police force for Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region said troopers searching for the perpetrators shot and killed a man who was in a vehicle that hit two officers at a traffic blockade on the outskirts of Barcelona. But Mr. Trapero said the driver’s actions were not linkedto the van attack.
Las Ramblas is a wide avenue of stalls and shops that cuts through the center of Barcelona and is one of the city’s top tourist destinations. It features a pedestrian-only walkway in the center while cars can travel on either side.
A taxi driver who witnessed Thursday’s attack, Oscar Cano, said the white van suddenly jumped the curb and sped down the central pedestrian area at a high speed for about 500 yards, veering from side to side as it targeted people.
“You could see all the bodies lying through Las Ramblas,” another witness, Miguel Angel Rizo, told The Associated Press. “It was brutal. A very tough image to see.”
Jordi Laparra, a 55-yearold physical education teacher and Barcelona resident, said it initially looked like a terrible traffic accident.
“At first I thought it was an accident, as the van crashed into 10 people or so and seemed to get stuck. But then he maneuvered left and accelerated full speed down the Ramblas and I realized it was a terrorist attack,” Mr. Laparra said. “He zigzagged from side to side into the kiosks, pinning as many people as he could, so they had no escape.”