Catalan police confirm Barcelona van terrorist shot dead

Suspect was wearing explosives vest; Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, had been target of massive manhunt since deadly vehicle-ramming

By AFP 21 August 2017, 6:34 pm

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In this watermarked frame grab from CCTV released by the Spanish newspaper El Pais on Monday Aug. 21, 2017, a suspect. believed to be Younes Abouyaaqoub is is captured by a security camera walking through La Boqueria market seconds after a van crashed into pedestrians in Barcelona last August 17. (EL Pais, via AP)

BARCELONA, Spain — A man shot dead by security forces on Monday is Younes Abouyaaqoub, the 22-year-old Moroccan who allegedly plowed his van into crowds in Barcelona, killing 13 people, police said.

“We confirm that the person shot down in the incident in Subirats (near Barcelona) is Younes Abouyaaqoub, the perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Barcelona,” police in Catalonia tweeted.

Police in Catalonia confirmed earlier that a man wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt had been killed in Subirats, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) away from Barcelona, but did not identify him.

Abouyaaqoub, 22, is suspected of plowing a van through throngs of tourists and locals on Thursday on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona, killing 13 people.

He fled the scene on foot and stabbed to death a passerby, hijacking his car to escape the city.

On Friday morning, other members of a terror cell he belonged to drove their car into pedestrians in the seaside town of Cambrils, with one of them stabbing a woman who later died.

All five occupants of the car were shot dead by police, with other members of the 12-man terror cell that organized the attacks detained or believed dead.

Abouyaaqoub was the only one still at large.