Spanish police shot dead five would-be attackers after confronting them early on Friday in a town south of Barcelona, where hours earlier a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds, killing 13 people and wounding scores of others.
The Islamic State said the perpetrators had been responding to its call for action by carrying out Thursday’s rampage along Barcelona’s most famous avenue.
Hours later in the early hours of Friday, as security forces hunted for the van’s driver, police said they killed five suspects in Cambrils, 120 km south along the coast from Barcelona, to thwart a separate attack.
The five men attempted to drive into tourists on the Cambrils seafront, police said. Their car overturned and some of them began stabbing people. Four were shot dead at the scene and the fifth was killed a few hundred metres away, police said.
Suspects were plotting a bigger attack: Spanish police
Suspects in Spain’s deadly twin terror attacks were preparing an even bigger assault but were thwarted in their plans and forced to act in a “more rudimentary” way, police said on Friday.
Catalonia police spokesman Josep Lluis Trapero added that a driver who mowed down crowds of pedestrians in the first attack in a busy Barcelona street on Thursday could be among the five suspects later shot dead in a nearby city.
“They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope,” he told reporters.
He was referring to a blast in a house in the town of Alcanar on Wednesday evening. Police believe the explosion, which killed one person and injured seven others, was caused an attempt to make explosive devices.
‘More rudimentary’
Mr. Trapero said that after this, the suspects — who formed part of a cell — allegedly went on to commit “more rudimentary” attacks. These involved vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and then again in the seaside city of Cambrils some eight hours later.
At least 14 people were killed and some 100 others were injured.
Police shot dead five “alleged terrorists” in Cambrils, but not before they had injured seven people, one of whom later died of her wounds.
“The alleged terrorists in Cambrils had an axe and knives in the car as well as fake explosive belts stuck to their bodies,” police in Catalonia tweeted. Asked if the van driver in the first attack was among the five killed, Mr. Trapero said: “The investigation points in this direction.” But while there were “clues” that this was the case there was no “concrete proof”, he added.
Three out of the five suspects shot dead have been identified, he added, without giving further details.
So far, authorities have arrested four suspects, including three Moroccans and a Spaniard, none of whom had a criminal record related to “terrorism”, police said.
The injured and dead came from 34 countries, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines, Catalan emergency services said. Spanish media said several children were killed.
Stop terror: Trump
As Spain began three days of mourning, people laid flowers and lit candles in memory of the victims along the promenade. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Spain's King Felipe visited Barcelona's main square nearby to observe a minute's silence.
Defiant crowds later chanted “I am not afraid” in Catalan.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump said the world must use “whatever means necessary” to stop “radical Islamic terrorism.”
