Template for terror? Latest carnage was similar to killing methods used in London
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THE latest terrorist attacks in Spain bear striking similarities to separate Islamic State inspired assaults launched on two London bridges earlier this year. The Westminster Bridge and London Bridge attacks resulted in 13 deaths and may have influenced the Spanish cell that killed 14 people in Barcelona and Cambrils.
The aim was to wreak havoc at tourist destinations in London and Spain by driving a hire van at speed to kill and maim pedestrians and tourists. Then, just as the terrorists in London emerged from the crashed vehicle armed with knives to attack passers-by, the four men in Cambrils clambered from the wreckage of their car wielding weapons and stabbing civilians on Friday morning.
The bodies of the London Bridge terrorists and the Cambrils four also revealed how they had worn fake suicide vests to try to maximise panic among the fleeing crowds.
Fortunately in both the London Bridge case and with the latest Spanish cell, plans to kill more in a so-called “spectacular” were scuppered. The three London Bridge terrorists were forced to abandon hiring a 7.5 ton truck because they could not fulfil the payment criteria of the hire company. Spanish security sources believe the cell that targeted Barcelona and Cambrils had wanted to hire a truck to pack it with explosives, but did not have the correct paperwork. Both groups were forced to fall back on a Plan B and hire a smaller vehicles.
A hire van was also driven at Muslim worshippers at Finsbury Park Mosque, north London, in June. However, security services across Europe will not have failed to spot how more and more young North African men are falling under the spell of Islamic State propaganda and are persuaded to carry out terror attacks.
Three of the Spanish-based cell shot dead by police in the seaside town of Cambrils were Moroccan, including Mohamed Hychami. In addition, Younes Abouyaaqoub – the 22-year-old suspected of driving the van down the Ramblas who was being hunted last night – was also Moroccan.
Hychami, 24, and Abouyaaqoub were both born in the small town of M’rirt. It lies on the main road to Fez, where Youssef Zaghba, 22, the London Bridge terrorist, was born. Rachid Redouane, 29, one of the three London Bridge attackers, was also Moroccan with Libyan heritage, but considered Morocco his home, it is there that his family believe he was radicalised.
Both M’rirt and Fez have a history of harbouring extremists. In April 2014, police arrested three suspected terrorists accused of recruiting and raising funds for al-Qaeda in both Fez and M’rirt. Later that year, a joint operation between the Spanish and Moroccan authorities broke an Isil recruitment group operating from Fez between the two countries.
In April this year authorities in Morocco claimed to have dismantled yet another Isil recruitment cell.
The Moroccan link emerged on Friday in Finland, when a Moroccan teenager was shot and arrested after stabbing two women to death and injuring eight others.
The country’s security services arrested four more Moroccans yesterday fearing they were connected to the killer, who had only arrived in the country last year as an asylum seeker.