Barcelona terror cell planned big attack on monuments – report

A suspected member of the terror cell that unleashed carnage in Spain last week admits to a judge that the jihadists had planned to hit monuments in an even bigger attack.

Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 21, and three others are charged with terrorist offenses over the rampages in Barcelona and a seaside resort that claimed 15 lives and wounded more than 100 people.

They are the only survivors of a 12-man cell whose members rammed a van into pedestrians on a tourist-packed boulevard in Barcelona on Thursday and hours later carried out a similar attack in the seaside resort of Cambrils further south.

The cell was planning “an attack on an even greater scale, targeting monuments,” according to a judicial source.

Chemlal, a Spaniard, was injured in an accidental explosion at a makeshift bomb factory on Wednesday evening that killed an imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, thought to have radicalized him and other young suspects.

Chemlal says during interrogation that the imam wanted to blow himself up, according to the source.

Police previously revealed that the suspected jihadists had been preparing bombs for “one or more attacks in Barcelona.”

— AFP