Van driven onto pedestrian mall, killing at least 13
A van driver deliberately zigzagged into a crowd enjoying a sunny afternoon on Barcelona’s main pedestrian mall Thursday, killing at least 13 people and leaving up to 100 people lying bloodied on the pavement.
“It was clearly a terror attack, intended to kill as many people as possible,” Josep Lluis Trapero, senior police official, told a news conference late Thursday.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault, which shattered a peaceful summer afternoon in one of Europe’s mostpicturesque cities. U.S. President Donald Trump and other Western leaders quickly condemned the attack and pledged cooperation.
The police cordoned off the Plaza de Cataluna and Las Ramblas in the heart of Barcelona, both tourist destinations, and began a chaotic pursuit for the
people who carried out the attack.
Several hours later authorities reported two arrests, one of a Spanish national from Melilla, a Spanish-run Mediterranean seafront enclave in North Africa, and the other a French citizen of Moroccan origin whose identification documents had been used to rent the van. Barcelona police declined to identify them, but they said neither was believed to be the driver, who remained at large.
Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and other news outlets named the Moroccan as Driss Oukabir. RTVE reported that Oukabir went to police in Ripoll to report that his identity documents had been stolen. Various Spanish media said the IDs with his name were found in the attack van and that he claimed his brother might have stolen them.
The arrests took place in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll and in Alcanar, the site of a gas explosion at a house on Wednesday night. Police said they were investigating a possible link to Thursday’s attack.
As security forces hunted for the van’s driver, who was seen running away, police said they had killed five attackers on Thursday night in Cambrils, a town about 60 miles south of Barcelona, to thwart a separate attack. In this one, suspects were wearing explosive belts.
Six civilians and a police officer were injured in Cambrils when the attackers ran them over in a car, authorities said. Police then shot them dead and carried out controlled explosions of the belts they were wearing.
Police confirmed that the Cambrils incident was linked to the van attack in Barcelona.
In Barcelona, witnesses described people screaming and running for their lives as the van driver wove back and forth just after 5:30 p.m., apparently trying to hit as many people as he could. Police officers swept through the area near Las Ramblas, a wide boulevard with a large pedestrian section, moving people out of the area.
Videos taken by witnesses posted online showed bleeding men, women and children lying motionless on the ground amid broken umbrellas and chairs. Paramedics and friends knelt to comfort them as police sirens wailed. Many of the injured were critically hurt, meaning the death toll could rise.
Whitney Cohn, a mathematics teacher from Montebello, New York, was walking along the mall with her husband and two children, on the way back to her hotel after visiting a museum, when the van came careening through the crowd, throwing people aside like dolls as screams pierced the air. She grabbed her two daughters and started running. “It was flying,” Cohn said. “The van missed us by a sec.”
Other witnesses described chaos as people dropped their belongings and fled as the van entered the mall and accelerated, hitting people indiscriminately — men, women, children and the elderly.
People streamed away onto side streets, many of them weeping. “It was horrific,” said Sergi Alcazar, a 25-year-old photographer who arrived 10 minutes after the attack and saw the carnage.
Jordi Laparra, a 55-yearold physical education teacher and Barcelona resident, witnessed the attack.
“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. He zigzagged from side to side into the kiosks, pinning as many people as he could, so they had no escape.”
After the afternoon attack, Las Ramblas went into lockdown. Swarms of officers brandishing handguns and automatic weapons launched a manhunt in the downtown district, ordering stores and cafes and public transportation to shut down.
Facebook activated its safety-check feature for Barcelona, taxis reportedly were giving free rides to help people get out of the city center and public transit was free in the areas where it was still operating.
Trump said on Twitter that the United States condemned the attack and would “do whatever is necessary to help, telling Spaniards to “Be tough & strong, we love you!”
In a subsequent Twitter post, Trump seemed to blame Islamist militants for the attack, citing what is widely believed to be a fictitious account of a military event, and even though the Spanish government had not identified any individuals or groups who might have been behind the attack.
It was the worst terrorist attack in Spain since 2004 and at least the sixth time in the past few years that assailants using vehicles as deadly weapons have struck a European city. Although countries like France and Britain have repeatedly been named in Islamic State propaganda urging followers to stage attacks, Spain has been less in the crosshairs.
The country has, however, been a transit point for recruits of the militant group, both for those going to Syria and those returning. The Spanish police arrested nine people in April who they said may have been connected with deadly attacks in France and Spain.
Thursday’s attack appeared to follow the playbook of recent assaults in which attackers drove vehicles into crowded stretches of large European cities.
“While it’s not clear whether the attackers corresponded with ISIS prior to the operation, it’s clear that the methods used in the attack (are) something ISIS encouraged and incited over and again,” said Laith Alkhouri, a director in New York of the business-risk intelligence company Flashpoint, which tracks militant threats and cyberthreats.
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.”
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said on Twitter that Barcelona and Paris “are cities of sharing, love and tolerance. Such values are stronger than this despicable and cowardly terrorism.”