Police see wider plot in Spain

Authorities say carnage in Thursday assaults could have been worse

BARCELONA, Spain — The vehicular attacks that fatally crushed at least 14 people in Spain may have been hatched in a house that the plotters were using as a bomb factory, police said Friday.

At least four suspects were arrested in connection with what Spanish authorities say appears to be a sophisticated and farreaching plot that could have been much worse.

The attacks carried out Thursday in Barcelona and hours later in the seaside resort of Cambrils wounded scores. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Barcelona assault, which accounted for most of the victims.

It was the worst terrorist attack to hit Spain in 13 years.

Police investigators said they were working under the assumption that the attack in Barcelona, where a van careened down a crowded pedestrian boulevard, and a second incident in which five men in a car hit people in Cambrils were related.

They also linked both assaults to an explosion the night before in the town of Alcanar, 120 miles southwest of Barcelona, that they now believe was evidence of a factory the plotters had been using to make a truck bomb.

Had they succeeded, the carnage Thursday could have been far more devastating.

A spokeswoman for Catalan police identified Moussa Oukabir, 17, as a suspect and possibly the driver of the van that careened down Las Ramblas, a major Barcelona street crowded with tourists.

The driver fled the scene on foot and is now the focus of a sweeping manhunt.

One of Oukabir’s older brothers was among four people arrested in connection with the attack.

Another police official said Oukabir may have been among five assailants killed in the attack in Cambrils, 60 miles southwest of Barcelona, when Spanish police opened fire on a vehicle after it plowed into a crowd, killing one woman.

Investigators said they were working under the assumption that both attacks stemmed from an explosion late Wednesday at a residence in Alcanar that they had initially discounted as a gas accident.

The victims came from at least 34 countries, Spanish authorities said.

Three of the arrested men were of Moroccan origin, while the fourth comes from Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa adjoining Morocco.

One suspect detained in Ripoll, about 65 miles north of Barcelona, has not been identified.

According to The Associated Press, one of the dead in Barcelona was an American man, Jared Tucker, 42.

Tucker has been confirmed as among those killed in a deadly truck attack in Barcelona, his family said Friday.

Tucker’s sister, Tina Luke, told The Associated Press that Tucker, 42, and his wife Heidi Nunes-Tucker were celebrating their first wedding anniversary with a visit to Barcelona.

Nunes-Tucker told NBC News that the couple were having drinks at a patio when her husband said he was going to the bathroom.

“Next thing I know, there’s screaming, yelling,” she said. “I got pushed inside the souvenir kiosk and stayed there hiding while everybody kept running by screaming.”

Tucker worked with his father at a family-owned pool business in the Bay Area since he was 16, Dan Tucker said.

In remarks to State Department staff Friday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the death and expressed condolences to the victim’s family.

Tucker leaves behind three daughters, his sister said in a message posted on a fundraising website.