Spain on hunt for Moroccan in van attack

Police suspect man, 22, was driver; 4 people held so far

A couple in Barcelona, Spain, look over a memorial of flags, messages and candles Saturday at the scene of Friday’s terrorist attack, when a van driver killed at least 13 people.
A couple in Barcelona, Spain, look over a memorial of flags, messages and candles Saturday at the scene of Friday’s terrorist attack, when a van driver killed at least 13 people.

BARCELONA, Spain -- Spanish authorities said Saturday that they were hunting for a 22-year-old Moroccan-born man who they suspect drove the van that plowed through central Barcelona last week in Spain's worst terrorist attack in more than a decade.

Catalan police say Younes Abouyaaquoub killed 13 people and injured at least 100 others on a promenade where people from 34 countries were strolling. Another vehicular attack early Friday killed one person and wounded five in the resort town of Cambrils. A counterterrorism expert who has been briefed on the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators believed the plot had been in the works for almost a year.

So far, seven people believed to be part of the terror cell responsible for the attacks have been killed, and four have been arrested. Spanish and Catalan authorities decided Saturday to maintain the terrorist threat level at 4 on a scale of 5, but said security would be reinforced.

Investigators also searched the home of Abdelbaki Es Satty, suspected of helping to orchestrate the attacks. The imam in June abruptly quit working at a mosque in the town of Ripoll, the home of the Islamic radicals suspected of being behind the attacks.

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Es Satty's former mosque has denounced the deadly attacks. Weeping relatives of the attackers marched Saturday into a Ripoll square, denying any knowledge of the plans of their sons and brothers, denouncing the attacks and offering their sympathies to the families of the victims.

The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for both attacks, saying it had "killed and wounded more than 120 citizens of the Crusader coalition" in the two assaults.

By late Saturday, the Catalan emergency service said 53 people remained hospitalized, 13 of them in critical condition.

The 14 people killed spanned generations -- from age 3 to age 80 -- and left behind devastated loved ones. They included a grandmother, 74, and her granddaughter, 20, from Portugal who were visiting Barcelona to celebrate a birthday; an Italian father who saved his children's lives but lost his own; an American man who was celebrating his first wedding anniversary in vibrant Barcelona.

Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, a 57-year-old Spaniard, was killed with his 3-year-old grand-nephew, Javier Martinez, while walking along the Las Ramblas promenade. His widow, Roser, is recovering in a hospital.

"We are a broken family," niece Raquel Baron Lopez posted on Twitter.

LONGTIME PLOT

Authorities said the two attacks were the work of a terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from a house in Alcanar, a small seaside town about 125 miles down the coast from Barcelona.

Police found the remains of two people in the rubble of a house in Alcanar after a blast leveled the structure late Wednesday. Authorities had initially thought the explosion was a gas accident, but took another look after the attacks.

At the blast site, police found traces of the Islamic State's signature explosive, TATP, which was used during attacks in Paris and Brussels. It is relatively cheap but highly volatile because it explodes at low temperatures. Police also found multiple butane tanks. The counterterrorism expert said police had recovered around 100 gas canisters from the property.

The extremists appear to have sought to build a bomb that would be placed inside a vehicle, and were assembling it in the house in Alcanar, the counterterrorism expert said.

Initially, only one person was believed killed Wednesday in the botched bomb-making operation. But officials said DNA tests were underway to determine if remains found there Friday were from a second victim. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators believed the remains may belong to the imam, Es Satty.

Javier Marti Meix, a deputy inspector who is leading the investigation there for the Catalan police, said it was possible that others could be buried in the rubble, which is in one of the poorer parts of Alcanar.

The suspects were living in the house illegally, he said, and other homes in the area have been occupied by squatters. The house had been repossessed by a bank in a foreclosure, he said.

Neighbors said they had seen young people and vehicles going in and out of the property, including an Audi used in the Cambrils attack and the van used in the Barcelona attack. They also reported having seen cars arrive with gas canisters since December.

Authorities in Alcanar carried out controlled explosions Saturday morning at the house because of concerns that there might be more explosives and gas canisters in the rubble. "If you hear detonations DO NOT be alarmed," Catalan police warned residents on Twitter.

Everyone so far known to be members of the cell grew up in Ripoll, a town in the Catalan foothills near the French border about 62 miles north of Barcelona. Spanish police searched nine homes in Ripoll, including Es Satty's, and two buses, and set up a roadblock that checked each car entering the town. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people arriving from Spain.

Neighbors, family and even the mayor of Ripoll said they were shocked by reports of the involvement of the young men, whom all described as integrated Spanish and Catalan speakers with friends of all backgrounds.

The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached, Ali Yassine, said he hadn't seen Es Satty since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.

"He left the same way he came," said Wafa Marsi, a friend to many of the attackers. Marsi appeared Saturday alongside the attackers' families to denounce terrorism.

Halima Hychami, the weeping mother of Mohamed Hychami, one of the attackers named by police, said he told her he was leaving on vacation and would return Aug. 25. His younger brother, Omar, slept late Thursday and left around midafternoon, the mother said.

Mohamed Hychami is believed among the five attackers shot to death by police in Cambrils. Halima Hychami hasn't heard from him since he left.

"We found out by watching TV, same as all of you. They never talked about the imam. They were normal boys. They took care of me, booked my flight when I went on vacation. They all had jobs. They didn't steal. Never had a problem with me or anybody else. I can't understand it," she said.

The counterterrorism expert said investigators were looking into the possibility that Abouyaaqoub and the other suspects had lived double lives, noting that some of their Facebook pages demonstrated an interest in going to clubs, girls, selfies and hair gel.

MISSING BROTHERS

Police believe Abouyaaqoub fled on foot after weaving a van through Las Ramblas, a central pedestrian area of Barcelona. Police later found the body of a Spanish man who had been stabbed to death in an abandoned Ford Focus less than 2 miles from the city center, and they believe there was a connection with the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

Abouyaaqoub became the focus of the search after police explored the possibility that the driver of the Barcelona van may have been Moussa Oukabir, a 17-year-old of Moroccan descent who died early Friday in a shootout with police in Cambrils. Moussa's older brother, Driss, is among those detained, although his role in the plot is unclear. He was taken into custody when he reported to police that his identity documents were stolen, and Ripoll's mayor confirmed that those documents were found in a vehicle used in the attacks.

The younger brother of at least one of the missing suspects also has disappeared, as has the younger brother of one of the five attackers slain Friday by police. Catalan regional police said they are mounting major roadblocks throughout the northeastern region, warning people they may encounter traffic jams.

A French police official said authorities also were looking for a Kangoo utility vehicle that was believed to have been rented in Spain by a suspect in the Barcelona attack that might have crossed the border.

Even with Abouyaaquoub at large and the other men missing, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared the cell "broken" Saturday.

Fatima Abouyaaquoub, sister-in-law of the Hychami brothers and the cousin of Younes Abouyaaquoub, said she found it all hard to believe.

"I'm still waiting for all of it to be a lie," she said. "I don't know if they were brainwashed or they gave them some type of medication or what. I can't explain it."

Information for this article was contributed by Raphael Minder of The New York Times; and by Lori Hinnant, Joseph Wilson, Alex Oller, Angela Charlton, Nicole Winfield, Mystyslav Chernov, Oleg Cetinic and Ciaran Giles of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/20/2017

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