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Police See Wider Plot in Spain and Say Carnage Could Have Been Worse Police See Wider Plot in Spain and Say Carnage Could Have Been Worse
(about 4 hours later)
BARCELONA, Spain — The vehicular attacks that fatally crushed at least 14 people in Spain may have been hatched in a house that the plotters were using as a bomb factory, the police said Friday. BARCELONA, Spain — When an earthshaking explosion on Wednesday blew apart a house outside Alcanar, a town surrounded by olive groves and holiday homes overlooking the Mediterranean, the police first blamed it on a gas leak.
At least four suspects were arrested in connection with what the Spanish authorities say appears to be a sophisticated and far-reaching plot that could have been much worse. “Nothing ever happens here,” Mayor Alfons Monserrat said.
The attacks carried out Thursday in Barcelona and hours later in the seaside resort of Cambrils wounded scores, shattering Spain’s blissful summer holiday season. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Barcelona assault, which accounted for most of the victims. The Spanish police now believe that tiny Alcanar may have been the incubator for a conspiracy far more ambitious than even the van attacks in Catalonia that killed 14 people and injured more than 80. All but one of the casualties occurred Thursday afternoon on the Ramblas, Barcelona’s central thoroughfare. It was Spain’s worst terror attack in more than a decade, and the Islamic State has claimed responsibility.
It was the worst terrorist attack to hit Spain in 13 years and echoed similar assaults by Islamist extremists in France, Germany, Britain and elsewhere, where vans and trucks have been used as instruments for killing. The Alcanar blast, they suspect, was a mistake by the plotters, who had intended to make a powerful bomb, place it in a van and detonate it in the crowded center of Barcelona. That plan disintegrated along with at least 12 butane gas canisters that were discovered in the ruins of the house on Wednesday night.
Police investigators said they were working under the assumption that the attack in Barcelona, where a van careened down a crowded pedestrian boulevard, and a second incident in which five men in a car hit people in Cambrils were related. Four men have been detained in the case, and three more remained at large, according to Maj. Josep Lluis Trapero, a senior police official in Spain’s Catalonia region. Investigators are still trying to determine the full extent of the network. Five of the suspects are dead, at least three of them appearing to be so young that they could not have grown beards. They were killed by the police during a second attack, in the holiday town of Cambrils on the coast early Friday.
They also linked both assaults to an explosion the night before in the town of Alcanar, 120 miles southwest of Barcelona, that they now believe was evidence of a factory the plotters had been using to make a truck bomb. While some of the other recent European terror attacks have been opportunistic hit-and-runs by individuals acting on their own, this was a comparatively complicated plot that police say involved at least two cells working in several different locations across Catalonia.
Had they succeeded, the carnage Thursday could have been far more devastating. The story also unfolded in Ripoll, hometown of one of the young men who was killed in Cambrils. His brother was arrested after his identity documents were found to have been used to rent the van used to carry out the Las Ramblas attack. At least one other person from Ripoll has been detained.
The authorities had been warning of an impending attack for some time, having raised the terrorism threat alert to its second-highest level in 2015. Since the beginning of this year, Spain has arrested 54 people suspected of links to Islamic terrorism, according to the Interior Ministry. There were few indications that the two brothers, Driss Oukabir, 28 and Moussa Oukabir, 17, had come under the influence of radical Islam. Ripoll is a mountain town northwest of Barcelona of about 10,000 people, and Moussa and Driss Oukabir, both of Moroccan descent, lived there with their mother.
A spokeswoman for the Catalan police identified Moussa Oukabir, 17, as a suspect and possibly the driver of the van that careened down Las Ramblas, a major Barcelona street crowded with tourists, killing 13. Among neighbors, friends, former employers and the local mosque, no one saw any outward sign of budding extremism. The elder brother, Driss, spoke perfect Catalan as well as Spanish and was not religious, according to a childhood friend, Raimon Sánchez, 27. He was known as a small time marijuana dealer, but nothing more.
The driver fled the scene on foot and had been the focus of a sweeping manhunt. But the police said late Friday that he was among the five assailants killed in the attack in Cambrils, according to Europa Press, a Spanish press agency. Officers fired on the five men after their vehicle plowed into a crowd, killing a woman. “We went to school together, after that everyone went his own direction, but when we saw each other we we would say hello, smoke a joint together,” Mr. Sanchez said. “He was in my home when he was a child — how can a person change that much?”
One of Mr. Oukabir’s older brothers was among the four people arrested in connection with the attack. Moussa was well liked by everyone. He also spoke perfect Catalan, said a neighbor. His sisters, Hafida and Hanane, described him to their former employer at Les Graelles, a local restaurant, as polite, “having really good marks in school” and eager to study. “He didn’t go to parties,” said the restaurant’s manager, Rosa, who said she was afraid to give her last name.
Investigators said they were working under the assumption that both attacks stemmed from an explosion late Wednesday at a residence in Alcanar that they had initially discounted as a gas accident. There was no sign that the family was particularly religious, she added. Neither sister wore a head scarf except when they were coming from the mosque and never when they were working.
A European counterterrorism expert, who was briefed on the details of the investigation, said the police believed the assailants had been manufacturing a sizable device that they aimed to pack into a large truck. The family lived in a nondescript apartment building near the southern edge of town. It is social housing for lower income, working-class people.
Friday morning, Las Ramblas in Barcelona was thronged again, almost as if nothing had happened. But the mood was subdued, with few customers in the shops. There were three Spanish-Moroccan families in the building and Moussa, the youngest of the Oukabir children, was good friends with them as well as other children who lived there, neighbors said. One 15-year old Catalan boy in the building said he used to go swimming with Moussa and played with him by the river that runs through town, and that they rode their bikes together.
At the spot where the van driven by the assailant had halted, and where many people were killed or injured, was a pavement mosaic by Joan Miró, the city’s most famous modern artist. In the center of the mosaic lay a makeshift memorial to the victims that included flowers, candles and notes, with one reading, “Barcelona weeps but does not surrender.” “Moussa never spoke about religion,” said the boy’s mother, Marche, who lived in the apartment directly next door. He was a good kid, just like you or me.”
The victims came from at least 34 countries, the Spanish authorities said, highlighting how the assailants chose to target one of Europe’s busiest tourist centers at the height of the summer season. Those killed included a 74-year-old Portuguese woman out walking with her granddaughter, two Italians and an American. A German official said that several citizens were “fighting for their lives” in the hospital. She said that Moussa and Driss’ parents had recently separated, but that the family was friendly so she was shocked when masked police burst into the building at 7 a.m. on Friday and broke into the Oukabir apartment. She did not know if they found anything.
Just before a moment of silence for the victims at noon Friday, church bells rang out and people began to move toward the Plaza de Cataluña, the central square of Barcelona. At another makeshift shrine there, two women, one wearing a hijab, were weeping and holding each other. People nearby chanted in the Catalan language, “The people together will not be beaten,” and, “We are not afraid.” From the open door, it appeared to be a modest apartment with three small bedrooms, two of them with just enough room for a single bed and a flimsy wardrobe and there was a living room and small kitchen. Clothes were strewn all over the floor from the raid. It was not clear whether anyone was there when the police burst in.
Political tensions erupted into the open when Catalans remonstrated loudly, with a man with a Spanish flag wrapped around his legs shouting, “This is not the place!” Moments later, opposing groups chanted at each other in Spanish and Catalan. At the mosque closest to the family’s home, Ali Yassini, who works with the mosque’s Islamic Council, said he had barely any contact with the brothers. “We don’t know them; we saw them maybe once a year,” he said, adding that among Muslim youth in Ripoll there is a generational divide. “The young ones want to party, these kids, 24 years and younger, they feel they are in jail here.”
Others were more reflective, consumed with sadness and worried that the plague of vehicular attacks across Europe over the past two years had now reached Spain. On Thursday afternoon, one of the attackers arrived at a branch of Telefurgo, a car rental firm, some 15 miles north of Barcelona. Using the identity documents of Driss Oubakar, he paid 59.90 euros (about $70), on top of a 150 euro deposit, to hire a white Fiat Talento, the firm told Spanish journalists.
“I am anxious, nervous, my chest is tight, but at the same time people are going out,” said Estella Gil, a teacher’s assistant, who had come to Las Ramblas in a show of solidarity. “Usually, I walk here feeling safe. Now, I am afraid, really afraid.” Chander Gurnani, 34, who runs a souvenir shop in central Barcelona, first saw that white Fiat Talento at around 5 p.m. on Thursday as it plowed into a young woman, sending her flying through the air. Then it mowed down an old man whose head began to gush blood. Rushing from his shop, Mr. Gurnani, an Indian immigrant, said that he took the man in his arms — before realizing some 30 seconds later that he was already dead.
Moussa Oukabir’s brother Driss Oukabir was arrested on Thursday after going to the police and claiming that his identity documents had been stolen. A national police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation, said at least three vans had been rented under Driss Oukabir’s name. He has denied any connection to the attacks So began Thursday’s attack on Las Ramblas, the long boulevard that connects the city’s port with its most central districts. The van veered south from Plaça de Catalunya, the city’s most recognizable square, zigzagging from side to side so as to hit as many people as possible.
Two years ago, a person using the name Moussa Oukabir wrote in an online forum that if he were king, he would “kill all infidels and only spare Muslims who follow the religion.” After mowing down at least a dozen people across a stretch of some 1,600 feet, and slamming into dozens more, it crash into displays of cheap souvenirs — phone covers, bracelets, drawings and even oven gloves, skidding to a halt on a public artwork by Joan Miró, the Catalan artist.
Three of the arrested men were of Moroccan origin, while the fourth comes from Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa adjoining Morocco. One suspect detained in Ripoll, about 65 miles north of Barcelona, has not been identified. It was not clear if his arrest was in connection with the attack in Barcelona, the second assault in Cambrils, or both. The driver quickly melted into the crowds.
As the scope of the attacks began to emerge, perhaps the most troubling aspect was the apparent existence of a terrorist cell that coordinated the assailants’ actions which might, but for an accident while mixing chemicals for explosives, have been far more deadly. One waiter had no idea why so many people were rushing inside his restaurant. Nobody explained what was going on, remembered Guldeep Singh, 30, who was back at work less than a day after the attack.
That blast in Alcanar, which killed one person and injured several others, occurred just before midnight on Wednesday and was first reported as a gas explosion. But as attacks unfolded in Barcelona and Cambrils later Thursday, the police soon made the connection to Alcanar. “They were screaming,” Mr. Singh said. “They were in shock. They didn’t have words.”
The attack in Cambrils was halted by the police only after the driver of a compact Audi A3 rammed his vehicle into a group of pedestrians. Seven people were wounded, and one woman later died of her injuries. For Mr. Singh, the penny dropped when he looked outside to see two people prostrate on the street. By the time an ambulance arrived 20 minutes later, one of them was already dead.
The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reported that the Audi had run through a security checkpoint at the entrance to the town, prompting a police chase. After driving into pedestrians, the five occupants emerged, wielding knives and an ax. But the police quickly descended, killing all five before they could commit any further mayhem. Those stuck in the shops and bars of Las Ramblas had little idea about the events that had led them to flee there.
The five assailants appeared to be wearing explosive vests, although the Catalan police said on Friday that the explosives were fake. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, claimed responsibility for the attack in Barcelona, but there has been no such claim as yet for the events in Cambrils. Outside, however, a picture of a complex operation was beginning to emerge. A second van was discovered in Vic, north of Barcelona; the police now think the assailants used it as a getaway car to help them leave central Barcelona after the attack.
At least 80 people from 34 countries were injured in the assaults. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said in a statement that 26 French were among the wounded, with 11 in serious condition. He also said that he would travel to Barcelona on Friday to “visit the French victims of this cowardly act and show France’s support to the Spanish people and authorities.” Photographs of Driss Oukabir, whom police had quickly linked to the van hire, began to circulate — prompting him to turn himself in at a police station in Ripoll. He claimed his documents had been stolen, and that he was not the man who hired the van.
The alleged involvement of the Oukabir brothers and their connections to Morocco will no doubt be a focus for the authorities: Several of the assailants involved in major terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels were of Moroccan descent or had relatives there. Down in Alcanar, another man was arrested in connection to the attack. Then, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for the events, in a statement issued through their news agency.
The Spaniard was detained in Alcanar, and the police were investigating whether he was connected to the explosion Wednesday night. For many survivors, shock and fear now began to give way to relief. A Spanish tour guide, Laia Escribano, had unwittingly taken a group of tourists to the street just minutes after the attack began and gradually realized how narrow her escape had been.
The attacks on Thursday were the most recent in a series of assaults in Europe claimed by Islamic extremists, in which assailants used vehicles to kill people in countries fighting the Islamic State. “I am lucky to be alive,” said Ms. Escribano, 31. “If the attack was 10 minutes later, I would have been right there with the students on the tour.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany expressed her condolences to the Spanish government and “close solidarity” with the people of Spain “in these difficult hours,” her spokesman said. But as Thursday rolled into Friday, relief gave way to renewed terror. In Cambrils, a small seaside resort town about 50 miles south of Barcelona, another car attack was unfolding.
The police said that access to the area around Las Ramblas and Plaza de Cataluña would be restricted to pedestrians and that security checks would be conducted, and they warned people not to wear large backpacks or carry large bags. At 1 a.m., five assailants in an Audi A3 hit a group of civilians before police officers fatally shot five of them, one of them Moussa Oukabir. A pedestrian later died after being hit by the car, and the police have confirmed that the Cambrils attack was committed by the same network that sent a van to Barcelona.
The Catalan authorities have asked the public to come forward with any information about the attack. In a night of strange developments, however, the oddest of all was perhaps the news from Alcanar. Twenty-four hours after the authorities considered the explosion there a gas leak, the story came full circle.
Alcanar, the police now suggest, was not just a sleepy holiday town. It may have been a place where the attacks were planned — news that shocked local residents.
“You might think all sorts of things,” said Nuria Gil, 50, one of the few local residents who lives here year-round, “but not that you have terrorists as neighbors.”