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Barcelona attacker Younes Abouyaaqoub shot dead by police near the city after four-day manhunt | |
(about 1 hour later) | |
The man who killed 13 people in a crowded pedestrian area in Barcelona on Thursday has been shot and killed by police after a four-day man-hunt, Catalan police have confirmed. | |
Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan national, was gunned down in a final show-down in Subirats, just an hour’s drive from Las Ramblas in central Barcelona where the attack took place. | |
Police, who moved in after a public tip-off of someone matching Abouyaaqoub’s description near a petrol station, now believe that the terrorist escaped the area by hijacking a car, killing its original driver with a knife and dumping his body. | |
Spanish media reports that Abouyaaqoub was wearing a fake explosive belt and had shouted “Allahu Akbar” when confronted by officers in Subirats. | |
Of the 11 other members of the 12-man Isis terror cell believed by police to be behind the attack in Barcelona, four are now in custody, five were shot and killed by officers after mounting a second attempted attack in Cambrils, and two were killed in an explosion at a house thought to be the group’s bomb factory. | |
Police said there were “strong indications” that one of those killed at the factory was a former imam suspected of radicalising the group towards committing the atrocity. | |
Els Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan provincial police force leading the investigation into the attacks, said in a message posted on Monday: | |
“The suspicious man in Subirats wears what looks like a belt of explosives attached to the body. This man has been shot down.” | |
In a follow-up, they added: “We confirm that the man shot down in Subirats is Younes Abouyaaqoub, author of the terrorist attack in Barcelona.” | |
The killing of Abouyaaqoub so close to the site of the attacks comes after police internationalised their manhunt on Monday morning – after fears the suspect may have escaped to France. | |
The daughter of a Catalan vineyard owner said her father alerted police after they saw a car crossing their property at high speed, even though the vineyard was closed off. | |
Roser Venura said police told them to immediately leave the Ventura Soler cava vineyard, located between the towns of Sadurni d'Anoia and Subirats. She said “we heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming toward the gas station” near the property. | |
Catalonia’s public broadcaster reported that a bomb disposal robot was used following the shooting to examine the apparently fake explosive belt worn by the attacker. Similar fakes were also reported to be worn at the attack in Cambrils. | |
CCTV images obtained by the Spanish newspaper El Pais appear to show Abouyaaqoub fleeting the scene of Thursday's attack through Barcelona's famous La Boqueria market, just off Las Ramblas and near the site of the attack – before he apparently hijacked his getaway vehicle. | |
The vehicle was later ditched with the body of Pau Pérez, 34, from Vila Franca, who was found stabbed to death in the back seat – bringing the total number of victims of the group to 15. | |
Isis has claimed responsibility for both the attack in Barcelona and the follow-up attack in Cambrils in which one woman died, attributing it to “soldiers of the Islamic State” and saying it targeted “Crusaders” and “Jews”. | |
The terror group’s statement about the attacks was riddled with fictions, however, including claiming responsibility for another attack on a bar that did not actually occur. | |
The four people who remain in custody so far in connection with the attacks are three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla. |