…Police say terrorists planned bigger attacks
…Commences search for driver van
The Spanish terror suspects had been planning even bigger attacks, police have revealed as they continue a massive hunt for the rampaging van driver who ploughed into a crowd in Barcelona.
Authorities are in a race against time to find the driver who left 13 people dead and more than 100 wounded on Las Ramblas yesterday afternoon.
Around 70 miles away in the seaside town of Cambrils, five terrorists wearing fake suicide belts were shot dead by police early on Friday after ramming pedestrians with a car in a second attack. One female civilian died and six other people, including a police officer, were injured.
A seven-year-old British boy is among those missing following the Las Ramblas rampage, which Prime Minister Theresa May said left a “small number” of Britons injured.
Meanwhile, Spanish police have revealed that the suspects had been preparing even bigger attacks in Barcelona “for some time”. Local media reports the suspects were intending to put the gas canisters in a car for the attack.
Dramatic video footage has emerged of one of the Cambrils terrorists, who taunted and smiled at police, being repeatedly shot in a scene described by witnesses as being like “watching a horror film”.
Police sources have named the suspected Barcelona van driver they are hunting as 18-year-old Moussa Oukabir. He is suspected of using his brother’s documents to rent the van that mowed down people on the famous boulevard.
Investigators revealed that a 12-strong terror cell thought to have been behind the two Spanish attacks is believed to have been planning an atrocity with gas canisters.
In Cambrils, holidaymakers ran for their lives as gunfire broke out close to the beachfront promenade early on Friday. A British tourist told how families and residents were ordered to take cover as bullets tore through the air.
The attackers’ Audi A3 overturned and the men were fired upon by police when they got out. At least one was brandishing a knife. Police said the attackers had been wearing explosive belts, which experts later concluded were fake.
Investigators are working on the theory that the attacks in Cambrils and Barcelona are linked to a gas explosion at a house in the town of Alcanar on Wednesday that killed one person.
A major manhunt for the driver of the van that mowed down holidaymakers and locals on Las Ramblas – a popular tourist road in Barcelona – is continuing after he fled unarmed.
Four people have so far been arrested over the attack, including Driss Oukabir, the elder brother of van driver suspect Moussa Oukabir.
The second arrested man, a Spanish national from Melilla, has not been named. The third person, who was arrested in the Spanish city of Ripoll on Friday morning, is believed to be an associate of Oukabir.
The third arrested man could have been the driver of a car that drove into a police checkpoint on Thursday night, investigators believe. A fourth person was arrested, also in Ripoll, on Friday, police confirmed. Moussa is believed to still be unaccounted for.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest on Spanish soil since more than 190 people died in the Madrid train bombs in 2004.