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Updated at 9.55am
THE MANHUNT FOR the main suspect in last week’s Barcelona attack has been extended to all of Europe, a Catalan government official said this morning.
Catalonia’s interior minister Joaquim Forn told local radio that Spanish authorities were officially notifying European police of the identity of the driver who ploughed his van into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas district on Thursday.
“We have to talk to European police to notify them of the identity because this person… is likely being sought in all European countries,” Forn said.
Earlier Spanish authorities said they hoped to identify all 14 victims of the deadly attacks in Catalonia and the members of the terror cell behind it, as a manhunt deepened for one suspect still at large.
With the 12-person cell dismantled, police were hunting a 22-year-old Moroccan man, Younes Abouyaaqoub, suspected of driving the van used in Barcelona.
Investigators believe the terror cell comprised at least 12 men, some of them teenagers. An imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, 40, is among the suspects, believed to have radicalised youths in Ripoll, a small town at the foot of the Pyrenees, where several suspects – including Abouyaaqoub – grew up or lived.
Spanish media said the imam had spent time in prison. El Pais and El Mundo said he had met prisoners linked to the Al-Qaeda-inspired bombing of Madrid trains that killed 191 people in March 2004, the worst terror attack in Europe.
The imam has been missing since Tuesday. On Saturday, police raided his apartment. They have raised the possibility that he died in an explosion Wednesday evening at a house believed to be the suspects’ bomb-making factory, where police uncovered a cache of 120 gas canisters.
The suspected jihadists had been preparing bombs for “one or more attacks in Barcelona”, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters, revealing that traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) – a homemade explosive that is an IS hallmark – had also been found.
The suspects accidentally caused an explosion at the house on the eve of Thursday’s attack in Barcelona – an error that likely forced them to modify their plans.
Instead, they used a vehicle to smash into crowds on Las Ramblas boulevard as it was thronged with tourists, killing 13 people and injuring about 100.
Several hours later, a similar attack in the seaside town of Cambrils left one woman dead. Police shot and killed the five attackers in Cambrils, some of whom were wearing fake explosive belts and carrying knives.
The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attacks, believed to be its first in Spain.
‘No music, no children, no women’
In the small town of Alcanar, investigators combed the rubble of the house believed to be the suspects’ bomb factory, where the gas canisters were uncovered.
A neighbour, 61-year-old French retiree Martine Groby, told AFP that four men “who all speak French” had been in the house next door since April.
“They were very discreet, too discreet. The shutters were closed, there was no music, no children, no women,” she recalled.
Most of the suspects are children of Moroccan immigrants, including Ripoll-born Moussa Oukabir, 17, one of five suspects shot dead in Cambrils. His older brother Driss is among the four arrested.
A cousin said Moussa “loved playing football, having a good time, chatting up girls”.
“The last few months, he started to become interested in religion. He used to go to a mosque in Ripoll. Maybe that’s where he was brainwashed,” the cousin said.
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Amazing that none of the neighbours flagged it to the authorities. Apparently some of them even saw gas cylinders repeatedly being brought into the house but none ever removed.
@Avina Laaf: Amazing? I’d say expected. Amazing is how that terrorist Ouabir or what’s his name was posting on Facebook 2 years ago he’ll kill all infidels and he wasn’t locked up or deported.
@Ser Barristan Selmy:
The neighbours were mostly native spaniards, not muslims.
@Avina Laaf: According to the Guardian newspaper report on it,the neighbours were indeed mostly foreigners. As of what descent they were then one would need to see the actual records of the people that actually own or rent those properties.. Just going by his previous post over the weekend,then this Ser account will know more than the actual people that hold those records..
@The Dunes Of Inchy: of course the neighbours were non natives. Most Muslims don’t have any interest in integration.
@Chris M.:How do you know that these foreigners were all Muslims ? You guys are really poor with your trolling..
@Ser Barristan Selmy: it’s because they’re embarrassed that people associated with their religion commit these acts
@Avina Laaf: And why didn’t the authorities warn the public after the explosion at a house in Barcelona the Night Before where bombs were being prepared for attacks?
Why were they not informed and alerted that a group of bomb makers had escaped and were currently armed and dangerous in Barcelona?
Surely this would have helped prevent the awful carnage that happened the very next day!
It is only a matter of time until we are attacked here in Ireland. I say that as the number of terror attacks in a western country is related to the amount Muslims a country has. We’ve been lucky so far in that our home bred/imported Islamic terrorists have chosen to carry out their attacks abroad such as Kahlid Kelly, they guy who carried out a suicide bombing for ISIS. All the bollards in the world protecting Grafton street won’t help. There’s too many other locations. We are almost uniquely vulnerable as the police are unarmed, with a tiny armed number of special police coupled with an unarmed population means that a couple of guys with a van and guns could go on a rampage without an armed responder for 30 minutes.
I’m not saying the solution is more guns. The solution is less Islam.
@Mike: Both are solutions.
@Mike: Sounds like you hope there will be. The extreme right want these attacks too because they have no justification otherwise.
“I say that as the number of terror attacks in a western country is related to the amount Muslims a country has.” And it would seem that countries with the least amount of muslims, if commenting on this site is anything to go by, are the ones quickest to panic over distant events, imagining that they are next.
@Neil Mcdonough: This is what people who speak up about the Islam problem have to listen to: virtue signalling buffoons who for absolutely no reason other than their own feelings decide to say we “want” an attack. We do not want attacks, that is why we take the time to express our opinion on the matter. Calling peaceful persons like myself who do not advocate violence “far right” is just a way of shutting down opposing views.
@Mike: There is a problem with terrorism but the risk is still minimal. You’re just scaremongering because it’s the only point you have to make, and in the process aiding daesh, who like nothing more than to see the rise of the right, which would further their aim of a clash of civilisations. Your contributions on here are just what they want. No wonder you hide who you are.
@Neil Mcdonough: They are not looking for a clash of civilizations, they are looking to replace our civilization. You are too ignorant to know and too lazy to find out. The information is out there, easily accessible. At this stage it takes effort to ignore.
@Mike: “This is what people who speak up about the Islam problem have to listen to” … oh would you kindly please shut the front door, you absolute lamp. Sick to the death of idiots like you taking over these comment sections everywhere. Go and pray to your Trump shrine.
@Joe Phillips: I’m sick of virtue signalling trolls with nothing to a dd to a debate except a little bit of info about their feelings. Joe is “sick” everyone, but he doesn’t have a single thing to add to the debate. He wants everyone to know that. The Islam problem is not a relatively large one in Ireland. That is not the case in Spain, UK, Germany, Sweden etc. Many countries will see majority Muslim populations in our lifetime. The UK already has Sharia courts. FGM has never been prosecuted there despite thousands of girls being sexually mutilated. Tens of thousands of non Muslim girls raped by Muslim grooming gangs. But that’s OK according to Joe because he’s sick of hearing about. It’s out kids and grandkids who will have to live the nightmare of intolerant Islam.
One of their possible targets the sagrada familia is jammed outside during tourist season utter carnage if they had succeeded In Bombing. But if 1 iman can radicalise that many young Muslims in a town of only 1000 without anyone noticing id b very surprised
This was a horrific attack, I can only assume it would have being much worse had they not blown them self’s up, shame all of them weren’t caught in the blast!
How can you drive a van through crowds of people and just disappear…
Any chance of a picture of this pig excrement? Might help.
It appears they got the gentleman they were looking for.
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