Eyewitness have spoken to various outlets describing the van attack on the popular Las Ramblas boulevarde in Barcelona which left at least 13 people dead and injured dozens more.
Patrick Tuenter, 20, told The Guardian that he was in Barcelona on the first day of a holiday:
Our hotel, the Pension Solarium, is about 200 metres from the scene of the crash. We were coming back from the beach and saw a scene of total chaos. People were screaming, there were a lot of wounded people. We saw a white van stopped in the middle of the street – the part where pedestrians walk down. It had driven right down the middle and thrown people onto the cobbled part of the street, down the sides.
Local resident Tom Gueller told the BBC what he could see from his home:
I heard screams and a bit of a crash and then I just saw the crowd parting and this van going full pelt down the middle of the Ramblas, and I immediately knew that it was a terrorist attack or something like that. I ran away, I mean I live near, I had to run back about 50 metres or so and go up to my flat and obviously see what’s happening on the road from my balcony.
Will Ako, 26, from London, was eating at a nearby restaurant with his family when they heard a disturbance:
We had just finished eating and were about to leave when we heard a commotion and the patrons in the restaurant rushing from their seats. I then saw people running to the east of the restaurant and I saw a couple of people, about 30 yards down the road, crouching around what looked like someone on the ground and they were calling for assistance. Within a couple of minutes, police started to arrive and they were running west of the restaurant and some were telling us to stay inside. Soon after, loads of cars, bikes and ambulances arrived and then the armed police.
BBC TV was also able to grab an interview with a British national who saw the attack:
“Everybody started screaming”– eyewitness after several injured as van crashes into people in Ramblas, Barcelonahttps://t.co/w7nva15D4o pic.twitter.com/6FFaUcayte
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) August 17, 2017
Gil Van Der Venne, an Australian man holidaying in Spain, told 3AW about the carnage he saw while returning from a day of sightseeing in the city. “[I] heard the screaming, the mayhem. [I] looked over the top and there were at least five bodies that I saw, three of them now in bodybags,” he said.
“It was very, very scary.”
We’ll keep you updated.
