At least 13 people are confirmed dead and dozens are injured after a van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on one of Barcelona’s most popular boulevards.
Catalonia’s interior minister Joaquim Forn confirmed that the incident – which is being treated as an act of terrorism – occurred shortly after 5pm local time on Thursday.
A white Fiat van sped down the centre of the 1km-long road, named Las Ramblas – which is usually packed with tourists and locals – until it struck a newspaper kiosk. Emergency services quickly arrived on the scene and cordoned off the area.
“I saw people flying over the vehicle…immediate carnage,” says Ali Shirazinia, #Barcelona attack witness https://t.co/ggwMKqWgAD
— CNN (@CNN) August 17, 2017
Television images showed a crashed van and a number of people lying on the ground in the wake of its path.
A suspect, named Driss Oukabir, has been arrested. Reports suggest that the 28-year-old is the man who hired the van which was used in the attack. Oukabir was born in Morocco and had lived in Marseille, and media quickly identified that his Facebook page featured many posts expressing anger about the global treatment of Arabs.
He had a warrant out for his arrest on domestic violence charges, but he was not previously suspected of terrorist or jihadi activity.
A second van linked to the attack –which authorities believe was probably to be used as a getaway car – has been found in the town of Vic in Catalonia.
A second suspect has also been arrested, but police have not divulged this person’s identity or connection to the attack.
Islamic State‘s Amaq news agency claimed immediate credit for the attack – though they often do this absent much information, so this is to be taken with a grain of salt until investigations determine more about what happened.
“The perpetrators of the Barcelona attack are soldiers of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting coalition states,” the agency said.
Donald Trump responded to the attack by encouraging his followers to “study” an apocryphal story about a U.S. general who allegedly dipped bullets in pigs blood to fight Islamic militants a century ago.
Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Historians and experts generally agree that there is little to no evidence this ever happened.
We’ll keep you posted.
