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Barcelona attack: suspected van driver shot dead by police west of city Barcelona attack: suspected van driver shot dead by police west of city
(35 minutes later)
Spanish police say they have shot dead Younes Abouyaaqoub, the main suspect in the Barcelona van attack. The last known member of the Barcelona terror cell has been shot dead after he was cornered by armed police while wearing a fake suicide vest.
The shooting happened in Subirats, a town 30 miles west of Barcelona. Police said Abouyaaqoub was wearing an apparent suicide vest. Younes Abouyaaqoub was killed in a town 30 miles west of Barcelona, four days after he drove a van along the crowded tourist boulevard Las Ramblas, killing 13 people and injuring more than 130.
Abouyaaqoub, 22, had been identified as the driver of the van that sped down Las Ramblas on Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring more than 130. Police said Abouyaaqoub shouted “God is great” just before he was gunned down outside Subirats, shortly after local people called police to say they believed they had spotted him.
Police said he shouted “God is great” shortly before being shot dead. The bomb squad was using robots to get closer to the body. Uncertain whether the vest he was wearing contained a real bomb or not, police deployed a robot to remove and examine the device, before confirming that it was fake.
Police said earlier on Monday that they could not be certain whether Abouyaaqoub was still in the area or had crossed into France. More than 800 vehicle checkpoints were set up in the aftermath of the Barcelona attack, and Spain tripled the number of officers working on anti-terrorism operations. Five other members of the cell – including Abouyaaqoub’s brother Houssaine - were shot dead by police in the coastal town of Cambrils early last Friday. They were each wearing fake suicide vests, possibly because they wanted to be shot dead rather than injured and arrested.
Abouyaaqoub fled the scene of the attack on foot and is thought to have killed a 14th person to take his car and escape from the city. The owners of a vineyard outside Subirats say police warned them to leave the property after they saw a car crossing their land at high speed. They then heard a helicopter overhead and a number of police cars racing to the area.
Spanish newspaper El País published images on Monday of a man it said was Abouyaaqoub apparently making his getaway. The three images show a slim man wearing sunglasses walking through what El País says is La Boqueria market, just off Las Ramblas. A local resident, Guillem Sánchez, told Catalan TV he then heard “as many as 20 shots” being fired.
Intelligence agencies had no prior knowledge of the terror cell responsible for last week’s atrocity. Police have said the cell was planning a large-scale bomb attack before an accidental explosion forced a change of plans. Abouyaaqoub, 22, had fled Las Ramblas on foot and is thought to have killed a 14th person to take his car and escape from the city.
Five suspects were shot by a police officer during a second attack in Cambrils, where a Spanish woman was killed, and four have been detained. Earlier on Monday police said they could not be certain whether Abouyaaqoub was still in the Barcelona region, or had crossed into France. More than 800 vehicle checkpoints were set up in the aftermath of the attack, and Spain tripled the number of officers working on anti-terrorism operations
More details soon … “This person is no longer just being sought in Catalonia but in all European countries, this is an effort by European police,” Catalan government official Joaquim Forn said on Monday.
As police across Europe attempted to locate Abouyaaqoub, inquiries about other members of the cell were underway in France and Belgium.
Anti-terrorism detectives were attempting to establish whether the Barcelona cell had any links with the terrorists responsible for the Paris attacks of November 2015 and the bombings in Brussels four months later.
Police also raided more properties in Ripoll, the small town in northern Catalonia where almost all the suspected members of the cell had been living.
The investigation is focused on Abdelbaki Es Satty, a man in his 40s who had been an imam in Ripoll for the last two years. Es Satty is now thought to have died when an explosion ripped through the cell’s bomb factory.
He was appointed as an imam in Ripoll despite having a conviction for drug smuggling. He had also fallen under suspicion during an investigation into attempts to recruit local youths to fight for Islamic State.
Es Satty spent several weeks in Vilvoorde, seven miles north of Brussels, between January and March last year, according to Vilvoorde’s mayor, Hans Bonte.
Mimoun Aquichouh, the imam at the main mosque in the town, said Es Satty had visited a mosque in the nearby town of Diegem, looking for work, but became defensive when asked to provide a record of his criminal history. “He asked why it was necessary, why we did not trust him,” Aquichouh said. At that point the mosque alerted police, and Es Satty was not seen again.
Es Satty had been arrested on a number of occasions, and has a conviction for attempting to smuggle 12 kilograms of hashish into Spain from Ceuta, one of Spain’s enclaves on the north African coast.
More significantly, his name also appears in a report that was compiled after five men were arrested south of Barcelona, in Vilanova i la Geltrú, on charges of recruiting young men to fight in Iraq.
On Monday, police said they possessed compelling evidence to indicate that he was killed when the cell’s bomb factory was destroyed in a premature explosion.
At least two people are thought to have perished in the blast early on Thursday morning in the town of Alcanar, 145 miles south of Ripoll. Es Satty’s van was found parked a few miles outside the town on Monday. Police have also been conducting DNA tests on the bodies and on samples taken from Es Satty’s home in Ripoll.
Police have recovered more than 100 gas canisters from the rubble of the bomb factory, and said they have found traces of triacetone triperoxide, an explosive used in a number of terrorist attacks in recent years.
Attempts were being made by the cell to either construct one large bomb, or a number of smaller bombs to be packed into three vans that they had rented, using Abouyaacoub’s credit card.
The explosion appears to have prompted members of the cell to instead launch a series of attacks using one of the vans in Barcelona and a blue Audi car in Cambrils, a coastal town south of Barcelona.
The Audi had been caught speeding on camera in Paris a week before the attacks, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
One woman died after being struck by the car in Cambrils while 13 were killed by the van as it accelerated down Las Ramblas, one of Barcelona’s most popular tourist destinations. The youngest to die was Julian Cadman, a seven-year-old dual British-Australian boy. More than 130 were injured.
CCTV images show that after the white Fiat van came to a halt half way along Las Ramblas, Abouyaacoub clambered out, donned sunglasses, and walked slowly through La Boqueria covered food market, making his way through crowds of tourists who had taken cover during the attack.
Police say he then walked for about 90 minutes, making his way to the Universitaria district in the north of the city. There he attacked and killed Pau Peréz, 34, a Spanish vineyard worker who had just parked his Ford Focus car.
Abouyaacoub drove away with Perez’s body on the back seat of the car, forcing his way through a police checkpoint to escape from the city. He abandoned the car after coming under fire from police to the east of Barcelona and made off on foot. When police found Peréz they discovered he had died from a single stab wound to the chest.
Police shot dead five young terrorists after the Cambrils attack, all of them from Ripoll or a neighbouring town. At least two people died in the bomb factory blast and four people are under arrest.
Four of the terrorists who were killed at Cambrils were shot by a single police officer. Among them was Abouyaacoub’s brother and cousins Mohamed and Omar Hychami.
The four were all of Moroccan origin. Relatives in Mrirt, 90 miles south east of the Moroccan capital, Rabat, said they last saw Younes and Mohamed when they paid an unexpected visit in March.
Both men had become religiously conservative, and were refusing to shake the hands of female relatives, according to a female cousins interviewed by Reuters, who asked not to be identified.
One relative said Mohamed was the more conservative of the two cousins, but added that he had frequented nightclubs and drank alcohol before his behaviour changed about three years ago.
“Up until last year, Younes was totally normal, but when he visited us earlier this year, he refused to shake our hands, just like Mohamed,” she said.