Barcelona van attack kills 13 in agonizing repeat for Europe
BARCELONA, Spain — A van veered onto a promenade and barrelled down the busy walkway in central Barcelona on Thursday, swerving back and forth as it mowed down pedestrians and turned a picturesque tourist destination into a bloody killing zone. Thirteen people were killed and 100 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in what authorities called a terrorist attack.
Two people were arrested but the van driver, who fled on foot, remained at large. Early Friday morning, police killed five suspects engaged in an attack that injured six people in a seaside resort town and that the government for Spain’s Catalonia region said was connected to the Barcelona killings.
The late afternoon attack in the city’s Las Ramblas district left victims sprawled in the historic street, spattered with blood or writhing in pain from broken limbs. Others were ushered inside shops by officers with their guns drawn or fled in panic, screaming and carrying young children in their arms.
“It was clearly a terror attack, intended to kill as many people as possible,” Josep Lluis Trapero, a senior police official for Catalonia told reporters late Thursday.