Suspects in Barcelona attack ID’d as Moroccan, Spanish nationals
A senior police official in Spain’s Catalonia region says the van attack that killed 13 people in Barcelona is “connected” to an explosion the night before in a town south of the city in which one person died and injured several more.
Police Major Josep Lluis Trapero also gave the nationalities of the two suspects detained Thursday. He said during a news conference that one is Moroccan and the other is a Spanish national from Melilla, a Spanish city on Africa’s north coast that neighbors Morocco.
Trapero says the arrests were made in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll and in Alcanar, the site of the Wednesday night explosion. He says neither detained suspect was the driver of the van used in the fatal attack in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas district.
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He says the man drove the attack van down the pedestrian walkway from the top of Las Ramblas to near the city’s opera house and then set out on foot. Trepero says it doesn’t appear the driver was armed.
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The interior chief for Spain’s Catalonia region says three days of mourning have been declared to honor the victims.
Interior Department chief Joaquim Forn says the death toll could increase since at least 15 of the 100 people thought to have been injured in the attack were hurt badly.
Senior police official Josep Lluis Trapero says the vand driving up onto a sidewalk and swerving among pedestrians in a crowded area was “clearly a terror attack intended to kill as many people as possible.”
Catalonia’s regional president, Carles Puigdemont, tells Barcelona broadcaster TV3: “Our priority is to save lives. And our second priority is the police investigation, to find the people responsible of this attack and anyone who has helped them directly or indirectly.”
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the van attack. A statement carried by the extremist group’s media arm – the Aamaq news agency – says Thursday’s attack was carried out by “soldiers of the Islamic State.”
It says the attack was in response to IS calls for its followers to target countries participating in the coalition trying to drive the extremist group from Syria and Iraq.
The statement provided no further details about the attackers.
