Barcelona Van Attack: At Least 1 American Killed, Another Hurt

BARCELONA, SPAIN — At least one American was killed and another wounded in the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, Spain, where vehicles were used to mow down pedestrians, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the death and expressed condolences to the victim's family in remarks to State Department staff Friday. Diplomats from the U.S. consulate in Barcelona are working with local authorities to identify victims and help other Americans in need, he said. The department said earlier that Spanish authorities reported there were still "several" victims who hadn't been identified. Neither Tillerson nor the department in an earlier statement identified either of the American casualties. The department said the injured American had a minor wound.

Several hours after a van mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona's popular Las Ramblas district, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 100 others, five people wearing phony bomb belts were shot to death by police after running over pedestrians with a car in Cambrils, a seaside resort in the country's Catalonia region. (For more information on this and other Across America stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

The two vehicle attacks — as well as an explosion earlier this week elsewhere in Catalonia— were linked and the work of a large terrorist group, authorities said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Authorities were still reeling from Thursday's Barcelona attack when police in Cambrils, about 80 miles south, killed five people near the town's boardwalk who ran over a group of tourists and locals with a blue car. Six people, including a police officer, were hurt. Catalan authorities say a woman in that attack has since died. She wasn't identified.

Four people have been arrested in all.

Watch: Police Arrest 4 In Connection With Spain Terror Attacks

"They were fakes, but very well made, and it wasn't until the bomb squad carried out the controlled explosion of one that they could determine they were fakes," he said.

The Audi and a damaged police car were towed from the scene Friday.

Warning: Graphic Video Of People Lying On The Ground After Barcelona Van Attack

Barcelona'da an itibar ile pic.twitter.com/MnVSfE3kOc
— necat ulu (@necatulu21) August 17, 2017

Forn told local radio RAC1 the Cambrils attack "follows the same trail. There is a connection."

The Cambrils and Barcelona attacks were being investigated together, as well as a Wednesday night explosion in the town of Alcanar in which one person was killed, Forn told Onda Cero.

"We are not talking about a group of one or two people, but rather a numerous group," he said. He added that the Alcanar explosion had been caused by butane tanks stored in a house and that firefighters and police responding to the blast were hurt.

The Barcelona attack — during the peak of Spain's tourist season — left victims sprawled across the street, spattered with blood and writhing in pain from broken bones. Others were ushered into shops by armed officers or fled in panic, screaming and carrying young children in their arms.

"It was clearly a terror attack, intended to kill as many people as possible," Josep Lluis Trapero, a senior police official for Spain's Catalonia region, told reporters late Thursday.

The Islamic State group said in a statement on its Aamaq news agency that the attack was carried out by "soldiers of the Islamic State" in response to the extremist group's calls for followers to target countries involved in the coalition trying to push it out of Syria and Iraq.

Cambrils Mayor Cami Mendoza said the town had taken precautions after the Barcelona attack, but that the suspects focused their assault early Friday on the narrow path to Cambrils's boardwalk, which is usually packed with locals and tourists late into the evening.

"We were on a terrace, like many others," said bystander Jose Antonio Saez. "We heard the crash and intense gun shots, then the dead bodies on the floor, shot by the police. They had what looked like explosive belts on."

Others described scenes of panic, and found safety inside bars and restaurants until police had secured the area.

Local resident Markel Artabe said he was heading to the seafront to get an ice cream when he heard the shots.

"We began to run. We saw one person lying on the pavement with a shot in his head then 20-30 meters further on we saw two more people, who must have been terrorists as they had explosive belts around them. We were worried so we hid."

A third Barcelona suspect was arrested Friday in the northern town of Ripoll, where one of the two detained Thursday was also caught. The third arrest was made in Alcanar, where the gas explosion in a house was being investigated.

"There could be more people in Ripoll connected to the group," Forn told TV3 television, adding that police were focusing their investigation on identifying the five dead in Cambrils as well as the driver of the Barcelona van.

The two suspects arrested Thursday were a Spanish national from Melilla, a Spanish-run Mediterranean seafront enclave in North Africa, and the other a Moroccan, police said.

Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and other news outlets named one of the detained as Driss Oukabir, a French citizen of Moroccan origin. RTVE said Oukabir went to police in Ripoll to report that his identity documents were stolen. Various Spanish media said the IDs with his name were found in the attack van and that he claimed his brother might have stolen them.

Media outlets ran photographs of Oukabir they said police had issued to identify one of the suspects. The regional police told The Associated Press that they had not distributed the photograph. They refused to say if he was one of the two detained.

The driver, however, remained at large.

"We don't know if the driver is still in Barcelona or not, or what direction he fled in," Forn, the Catalan interior minister, told SER Radio. "We had local police on the scene, but we were unable to shoot him, as the Ramblas were packed with people."

The Catalan regional government said people from 24 countries were among those killed and injured in Barcelona.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the killings a "savage terrorist attack" and said Spaniards "are not just united in mourning, but especially in the firm determination to beat those who want to rob us of our values and our way of life."

After the afternoon attack, Las Ramblas went into lockdown. Swarms of officers with hand guns and automatic weapons launched a manhunt in the downtown district, ordering stores and cafes and public transport to shut down.

By Friday morning, the promenade had reopened to the public, and neighbors and tourists were allowed past police lines to go back to their homes and hotels. The city center remained under heavy surveillance.

At noon Friday, a minute of silence honoring the victims was to be observed at the Plaza Catalunya, near the top of the Ramblas where the van attack started. Rajoy declared three days of national mourning.

Similar vehicle attacks have been carried out at tourist sites in France, Germany, Sweden and Britain.

"London, Brussels, Paris and some other European cities have had the same experience. It's been Barcelona's turn today," said Carles Puigdemont, president of Catalonia's government.

The bloodshed was Spain's deadliest attack since 2004, when al-Qaida-inspired bombers killed 192 people in coordinated assaults on Madrid's commuter trains. In the years since, Spanish authorities have arrested nearly 200 jihadists. The only deadly attacks were bombings claimed by the Basque separatist group ETA that killed five people over the past decade but it declared a cease-fire in 2011.

"Unfortunately, Spaniards know the absurd and irrational pain that terrorism causes. We have received blows like this in recent years, but we also know that terrorists can be beaten," Rajoy said.

The U.S. condemned the attack and has offered assistance to authorities in Spain as they investigate.

By JOSEPH WILSON and ALEX OLLER, Associated Press

Photo credit: Oriol Duran/Associated Press