The attacks in Catalonia: the hunt for the fugitive extends to Europe

AFP

AFP

Monday, August 21, 2017 05:51

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Monday, August 21, 2017 05:51

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BARCELONA | The Spanish police has released on Monday across Europe the report of Younes Abouyaaqoub, author of the terrorist attack in Barcelona, announcing that it had made a victim in his flight on Thursday and could be armed.

All policies in the continent are searching for the driver of the white van that has sown terror on the central alley of the Ramblas in Barcelona, killing 13 passers-by.

“It is dangerous and could be armed,” warned the police about Catalan, which has circulated on social networks, four photos of the Moroccan 22 years of about 1,80 m and who could wear “a beard of three or four days.”

The notice of research was now distributed abroad, said the person in charge of home affairs, catalan, Joaquim Forn, during a press conference.

The Spanish authorities have asked the public to help them to “lay hands” on Younès Abouyaaqoub, by providing all the information it might have on his contacts or his past activities.

The balance sheet of the attacks of Barcelona on Thursday, and the Catalan resort of Cambrils the next night, climbed Monday to the death of 15 people. The investigators have established that Younes was killed a car driver in Spanish to take possession of his car.

After abandoning the truck on the Rambla, he fled on foot. After a journey of some six miles, he arrived at a parking lot where he approached a driver. “He stabs him, the place on the back seat and tries to get out of Barcelona,” said the chief of police in Catalan, the major Josep Lluis Trapero.

Motorist murdered

The city is cordoned off, Younis falls over a police control and accelerates, knocking over an officer. The police fired on the car, they will later be abandoned. In a first time, they believed that the corpse was that of the driver, hit by a ball, has explained the major Trapero.

The major Trapero has not yet confirmed the death of the imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, one of the last members of the terrorist cell.

This Moroccan, aged forty years, who has been in prison for drug trafficking from 2010 to 2014, and has stayed in the municipality of Machelen, near Brussels, between January and march 2016″, has been missing since Tuesday.

The man could have perished in the explosion of Alcanar, the hideout of jihadist 200 km south-west of Barcelona, where police found human remains still unidentified.

Es Satty lived, as the other attackers, to Ripoll, a small town at the foot of the Pyrenees, where the police conducted Monday morning from new searches, according to Mr. Forn.

The 15 deaths identified

The identification of victims is complete, has announced that the person responsible for the affairs of Justice of Catalonia, Carles Mundó.

There are six Spaniards, including one woman with dual citizenship in argentina and a child, three Italians, one Canadian, one Belgian, two Portuguese, an(e) American(e), and a autralo columbia for seven years.

Nine people were still in between life and death Monday, and 10 wounded in a serious condition.

The balance sheet could have been even heavier since the conspirators were about to commit “one or more attacks” of “imminent”, according to major Trapero. A failure led to the explosion that destroyed in Alcanar the house where they were preparing explosives for about six months.

Martine Groby, a retired French 61-year-old neighbour of the villa, was told have seen since April of four men, “who spoke French”, come and go offloading with distrust of the goods.

The inspection of their hideout has uncovered at least 120 of butane gas cylinders, explosive substances, including traces of components of TATP, an explosive favored by jihadists of the group islamic State (EI), which has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The TATP, known by the jihadists as “the mother of Satan”, is made with ingredients for sale free.

A manifestation of the muslim community against terrorism was planned Monday evening in Barcelona while graffiti hostile have been discovered on a few mosques in Spain.