Spanish Police Shoot Van Driver of Barcelona Terror Attack
22 August 2017 13:38 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Spanish police have reportedly shot a man named Younes Abouyaaqoub, believed to be a terrorist in Barcelona.
As quoted by Reuters on Tuesday, August 22, 2017, police shot Abouyaaqoub in an operation conducted in Subirats, a rural area.
Local media said a woman found Abouyaqoub on Monday evening local time. He fled until the police finally found him.
Police found an explosive belt on Abouyaqoub's body and shot him dead immediately. A bomb squad robot was deployed by police while approaching Abouyaqoub's body in order to identify him.
"The Catalan police have shot dead Younes Abouyaaqoub, a van driver and terrorist involved in the terror attack in Barcelona last Thursday that killed 14 people," Carles Puigdemont, head of the Catalonia region told reporters.
Abouyaaqoub has been a police fugitive since last Thursday. He was a fugitive when he drove into a crowd on one of the famous streets of Barcelona, La Rambla.
Police said Abouyaaqoub first escaped from Las Ramblas by walking amid the chaos of the attack. In this incident 13 people were killed and another 120 wounded.
He then hijacked a car, stabbed his driver, Pau Perez (34) to death before crashing into a police checkpoint. Perez was the victim of the 15 deaths of Barcelona and Cambrils terror.
Earlier, police had shot dead five of those who were involved with the terror attack in Cambrils after the action. In this attack, a woman was killed and six others were injured. All five were believed to be wearing an explosive belt, which was later revealed as a fake bomb.
Three of the five perpetrators shot dead in Cambrils have also been identified by police. They are Moussa Oukabir (17), Said Aalla (18) and Mohamed Hychami (24). Moussa's brother, named Driss, is one of four people arrested by the police.
Meanwhile, Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, thought to be the leader of the deadly terror groups in Barcelona and Cambrils last week, was confirmed dead in an explosion at a house in Alcanar. "His body is certain to be in that house," Josep Lluis Trapero, the Catalan police chief, told reporters.
REUTERS | AL JAZEERA | SITA PLANASARI AQUADINI
