Spain terrorism suspects visited France

Police find suicide belt at home attackers used

MADRID — Some of the Spain terror suspects spent a night in France a week before the fatal attacks in and near Barcelona, French authorities said Wednesday as police in Spain revealed they found a suicide bomb belt in the house where the attackers tried to make explosives.

An Audi A3 car that was observed in France on Aug. 11-Aug. 12 is the same one involved in the attack carried out in the seaside town of Cambrils in the early hours of Aug. 18, anti-terrorism prosecutor Fran- cois Molins said.

French investigators are working “very closely” with Spanish colleagues “to determine the precise reasons for this lightning trip … and if the terrorists were in contact with other people on (French) territory,” Molins said.

Separately, a French police official with knowledge of the investigation said several men who arrived in the Audi stayed at a hotel in the southern Paris suburb of Malakoff. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name.

In Spain, police disclosed that a belt charged with explosives was among the evidence discovered in the rubble of the house south of Barcelona. An explosion there on the eve of the deadly Barcelona van attack derailed the suspects’ initial plans to bomb important city sites, according to court documents.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the belt was meant to be used by the imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, who was killed in the house explosion and allegedly masterminded the attacks, according to the two jailed survivors. One of the suspects told a judge that Es Satty intended to blow himself up when the group struck Barcelona monuments.

Thirteen people were killed Thursday when a van zigzagged through Barcelona’s Las Ramblas promenade. A 14th was stabbed to death by the van’s driver as he made his getaway.

A 15th victim was killed when the Cambrils attackers, armed with knives, drove the Audi onto a pedestrian path.