ALERT: Spain- Van Crashes into Busy Tourist Area (August 17, 2017)

August 18, 2017

Today, at least a dozen people were killed and possibly more than 80 injured when a van deliberately drove through a popular pedestrian area of Barcelona.

The incident is being investigated as a terrorist attack. Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack, but the driver is still at large.

The UK’s Guardian reports:

Thirteen people are dead and at least 50 injured after a van rammed into a crowded street in the heart of Barcelona, in the latest attack where a vehicle was turned into a lethal weapon.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place on Thursday afternoon when a large white Fiat van veered off the road at the top of La Rambla into a crowd of unsuspecting people. Within an hour, Spanish police confirmed they were treating it as a terrorist attack.

Later on Thursday evening, police said two suspected attackers had been arrested. A Catalan police official was quoted by Reuters as saying one of the arrested men was Moroccan and the other was from Melilla, a Spanish enclave in north Africa, and that neither of them was the driver of the van used in the attack.

La Rambla is the boulevard known to all visitors to Barcelona. Leading down from the large, open Plaza de Catalunya, the tree-lined boulevard is a shady release from the beating heat of the square.

At almost any time of the day, the area is full of people buying newspapers, postcards and souvenirs in the kiosks or looking at the flower stalls. Early on Thursday afternoon, with locals mostly away on holiday, a large number of those people were tourists.

At around 5pm, a large white Fiat van veered off the road at the top of the street and drove straight into the crowd milling around near the entrance to the Plaça de Catalunya metro station.

It sped down the central, pedestrian zone of the boulevard towards the port, ploughing its way through the crowd as people fled in panic.

About 500 metres down the boulevard, shortly after the famous Boqueria food market and before the Liceu opera house, the pavement is adorned with a colourful mosaic by artist Joan Miró. It was at here that the van, with its front fender smashed up, came to a halt. The pavement behind it was littered with injured people and 13 people were dead or dying.

According to Reuters:

A van mowed through crowds of tourists on Barcelona’s most famous avenue on Thursday, killing about a dozen people in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State.

The head of the Spanish region of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, said at least 80 people had been taken to hospital and around 12 had died.

He said two people had been arrested. It was still not clear how many attackers had been involved.

Witnesses said the white van zigzagged at high speed down Las Ramblas, a busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians and leaving bodies strewn across the ground.

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said: “The perpetrators of the Barcelona attack are soldiers of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting coalition states” – a reference to a U.S.-led coalition against the Sunni militant group. The claim could not immediately be verified.

The incident took place at the height of the tourist season in Barcelona, which is one of Europe’s top travel destinations with at least 11 million visitors a year.

The U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Spain has issued a Security Message:

Please contact the PR Team if you have any questions or concerns: TravelLeadersGroupPR@TravelLeaders.com.