The suspect behind the Barcelona terror attack has been fatally shot by cops while he was wearing a suicide belt.
Local reports say cops believe that the 22-year-old Ïslamist militant was the driver of the van responsible for killing 13 people in the horrific attack on tourist hotspot Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain.
The shooting happened in Subirats, a town about an hour’s drive west from Barcelona. Authorities confirmed that a man wearing suicide belt was shot and killed by the police. It is not yet established, however, if the device was real or fake. The police only said that a bomb squad was using a robot to approach the man’s body.
Some Spanish local media, citing their investigative sources, reported that the police shot Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspect of the horrific terror attack who was on the run since Thursday when he drove at high speed into heavy crowds strolling along tourist spot Las Ramblas.
Local media further reported that the man was seen by a woman in the early afternoon and then fled through vineyards. Police managed to find him and shoot him on a road near a sewage treatment plant.
A spokesman for Mossos d’ Esquadra, however, would not yet confirm if the man the police shot was the suspect. He said: “We cannot at this stage confirm that the man who has been shot is Younes Abouyaaquoub. What we can confirm is that the suspicious person was wearing what appeared to be an explosive belt.”
The Barcelona terror attack was Spain’s worst militant attack in a span of over a decade. The ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the terror act. The Spanish police had earlier asked the rest of Europe to join the manhunt for the Moroccan-born suspect.
Abouyaaquoub had been the only one of 12 accomplices still at large, before the shooting. His mother issued an appeal for him to surrender saying she would rather see him in prison than him ending up dead.
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