Manhunt for suspected van driver underway

Catalan police is searching for Younes Abouyaaqoub, the only member of the terrorist cell responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Catalonia who is still on the run. Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan national, is suspected to be the driver of the white van that run over a crowd in La Rambla on Thursday afternoon.

So far, 14 people are confirmed dead: 13 were killed in La Rambla and a woman died after a second terrorist attack hit the Catalan town of Cambrils in the early hours of Friday. A man was also found dead inside his car in a town near Barcelona, and the police is investigating whether he was killed by one of the attackers when trying to escape.

Catalan detectives said that the terrorist group may had been planning an even bigger attack with bombs. In the early hours of Thursday, a big explosion occurred in the southern Catalan town of Alcanar. Over a hundred butane gas bottles were found inside a house that was completely destroyed by the explosion. Police confirmed the ties between the terrorist attacks and the incident in Alcanar.

In total, the jihadist group that carried out the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils — and that might had been planning a bomb attack with the explosives found in Alcanar — had 12 members: five were taken down by police officers in Cambrils, four have been arrested in some of the anti-terrorist operations that police have been carrying out since the attacks, and 2 were presumably killed by the explosion in Alcanar.