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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Spanish police shoot five after van attack kills 13
A woman places a postcard of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral next to flowers on Las Ramblas avenue in Barcelona yesterday. Photo: AP
/ Reuters, BARCELONA, Spain
Spanish police shot dead five would-be attackers after confronting them early yesterday in a town south of Barcelona where hours earlier a suspected extremist drove a van into crowds, killing 13 people and wounding at least 100.
The Islamic State group said the perpetrators had been responding to its call for action by carrying out Thursday’s rampage along Barcelona’s most famous avenue, which was thronged with tourists enjoying an afternoon stroll at the peak of the summer season.
Bodies, many motionless, were left strewn across the avenue and authorities said the toll of dead, which included several children, could rise, with more than 100 injured.
Hours later in the early hours of yesterday, as security forces hunted for the van’s driver, police said they killed five suspects in Cambrils, 120km south along the coast from Barcelona, to thwart a separate attack.
The five men attempted to drive into tourists on the Cambrils seafront, police said.
Their car overturned and some of them began stabbing people. Four were shot dead at the scene and the fifth was killed a few hundred meters away, police said.
One civilian — a Spanish woman — was killed in the Cambrils incident while several other civilians and a police officer were injured. Police destroyed explosive belts the men had been wearing, though they turned out to be fake.
Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, the day before the van ploughed into the tree-lined walkway of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas avenue, one person was killed in an explosion in a house in a separate town southwest of Barcelona, police said.
Police said they had arrested a Moroccan and a man from Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla, though neither was the van driver. He was seen escaping on foot and was still at large. A third man was yesterday arrested in the town of Ripoll.
A judicial source said investigators believed a cell of at least eight people, possibly 12, might have been involved in the Barcelona and Cambrils operations and that it had been planning to use gas canisters.
Later yesterday, residents and tourists returned to Barcelona’s famous Las Ramblas promenade where hours earlier a white van had zig-zagged at high speed through pedestrians and cyclists, leaving bodies and injured writhing in pain in its wake.
As Spain went into three days of mourning, people laid flowers and lit candles in memory of the victims along the promenade.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Spanish King Felipe visited Barcelona’s main square nearby to observe a minute’s silence.
“Those that live here can’t believe it, because we live here, we walk here, this is our neighborhood,” Sebastiano Palumbo, 47, an Italian architect working in Barcelona, said as he walked his dog. “I think the best thing would be to continue, every day, doing what I do.”
The injured and dead came from 24 different countries.
Spanish media said several children were killed.
Police said the two men detained on Thursday had been arrested in two towns, Ripoll and Alcanar, both in the region of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital.
The explosion was also in the town of Alcanar.
One person died and another was injured in that incident, police said.
A man was also found dead in a car which had driven into a police checkpoint in Barcelona, though the police could not immediately confirm it was connected with the van attack.
TAIWANESE INJURED
The Tourism Bureau yesterday confirmed that two Taiwanese tourists sustained minor injuries in the attack.
The mother and daughter were part of a tour group organized by Taipei-based Cosmo Express International Co （世邦旅行社）, the bureau said, adding that the group was originally scheduled to return to Taiwan today.
The mother sustained a fracture to her collar bone while the daughter was only lightly injured, it said.
The mother can leave the hospital after undergoing minor surgery, the bureau said, adding that the group has decided to stay in Paris for the night before returning home tomorrow.
Statistics from the bureau showed that 446 Taiwanese are in the Barcelona area on group tours.
The bureau has asked travel agencies to monitor the situation in Barcelona and ensure the safety of all travelers.
President Tsai Ing-wen （蔡英文） yesterday offered her condolences to the families of those killed in the attack and wished for a quick recovery for injured people, Presidential Office spokesman Sidney Lin （林鶴明） said.
Presidential Office Secretary-General Joseph Wu （吳釗燮） earlier called Jose Luis Echaniz Cobas, the Spanish representative to Taiwan, to express Tsai’s condolences, Lin said.
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan and CNA
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
A woman places a flower next to a paper that reads “Catalunya — place of peace” on Las Ramblas avenue in Barcelona yesterday. Photo: AP
