Terror attack in Barcelona LIVE

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/video/...cid=spartanntp

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/barcelona...152356629.html

Barcelona terror attack: Two men arrested, 13 killed after van ploughed into crowd of pedestrians
Yahoo News UK 6 hours ago
Chaos in streets after alleged terror attack in Barcelona, Spain
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13 dead after van ploughs into crowd of pedestrians
Two men have been arrested
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack
Attack took place in popular Las Ramblas tourist area
Two men have been arrested after a white van ploughed into a crowd of people in a busy Barcelona tourist district, killing at least 13 and injuring 100 others.

Officials said some were very badly hurt, suggesting the death toll could continue to rise.

The Islamic State Group claimed responsibility for the attack via their Amaq News Agency. ISIS frequently declares involvement in incidents across the world so their claims should be treated with caution, though Catalan Police have confirmed the incident is a terror attack.

Senior police officials said Thursday’s van attack was linked to an explosion at a nearby home the previous day in which one person was killed.

Local police also said a driver later ran over two police officers at a checkpoint elsewhere in the city, but it was not clear if the incidents were linked.

The horrifying attack took place at around 5pm local time, when the vehicle careered into terrified pedestrians in the busy tree-lined promenade in Las Ramblas, one of the most popular parts of the city, visited by tourists and locals alike.

Police said that neither of the two men arrested had driven the van, though they were involved in some capacity.

Spanish media have published a picture of a man police sources say rented the van. Authorities named him as Driss Oukabir, a 28-year-old born in Morocco who lives in Catalunya.

Security sources told El Pais that Oukabir had recently visited Morocco and arrived back in Barcelona earlier this week.
The man police sources say rented the van that was used in the attack
Pictures from the scene showed police helping people injured in what was described as a ‘massive crash’.

Numerous bodies could be seen strewn over the street.

Earlier reports said up to two armed men had fled to a restaurant and taken hostages, but police have since confirmed no suspects are holed up in nearby buildings.


Reports say that a Spanish passport of a man with a Moroccan name was found inside the van.

The area has now been cordoned off and local metro stations are closed, with people taking shelter in local shops and cafes.


Police and emergency services attend to injured persons at the scene REUTERS
Steve Garrett was in a nearby market and sheltered in a bakery with several others after streams of people ran inside.

One member of the group who took refuge with him said she had heard gunshots after the incident.

Mr Garrett told the BBC: “A very large number of people ran into the market area in a big kind of way, lots of screaming, lots of shouting.

“The security guards immediately responded. We ran into the bakery with four or five other people and ran straight upstairs and hunkered down whilst an enormous wave of people went through the market.

“The lady that was with us said she heard some gunshots.”

Mr Garrett said a “second wave” of people then entered the market, followed by armed police.

He said: “They seemed to sweep through the market area.

“They seemed to be looking for someone. They were going very carefully, very cautiously, stall to stall.”


Eyewitness Ethan Spibey told Sky News: ‘It was real chaos, people started running, screaming. There was a loud bang.’

Another witness Aamer Anwar said: “All of a sudden, I just sort of heard a crashing noise and the whole street just started to run, screaming. I saw a woman right next to me screaming for her kids.

“Police were very, very quickly there, police officers with guns, batons, everywhere. Then the whole street started getting pushed back.”

A plain clothed police officer secures the area in Barcelona. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
A plain clothed police officer secures the area in Barcelona. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
Tom Gueller, who lives on a road adjoining the site of the attack, was forced to flee when the vehicle began hitting pedestrians.

He told the BBC: “I heard screams and a bit of a crash and then I just saw the crowd parting and this van going full pelt down the middle of the Ramblas, and I immediately knew that it was a terrorist attack or something like that.

“I ran away, I mean I live near, I had to run back about 50 metres or so and go up to my flat and obviously see what’s happening on the road from my balcony.”

Asked about the van, he said: “It wasn’t slowing down at all. It was just going straight through the middle of the crowds in the middle of the Ramblas.”

In recent weeks, threatening graffiti against tourists has appeared in Barcelona, which draws at least 11 million visitors a year.

In one video released under the slogan “tourism kills neighbourhoods”, several hooded individuals stopped a tourist bus in Barcelona, slashed the tyres and spray-painted the windscreen.

A police officer moves away bystanders. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
A police officer moves away bystanders. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Since July 2016 a number of vehicles have been driven into crowds in a series of attacks across Europe, killing well over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm.

Las Ramblas is a popular shopping street in the centre of Barcelona and one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that his thoughts were with the victims of the attack.


Prime Minister Theresa May said her thoughts are with the victims of the “terrible attack”, adding: “The UK stands with Spain against terror.”

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/muslims-f...192922814.html


Muslims fear anti-Islam backlash in tolerant Barcelona
Daniel BOSQUE,AFP Sat, Aug 19 12:29 PM PDT

Barcelona (AFP) - Prayer time is approaching but Raja Miah, an imam at a tiny mosque in the heart of Barcelona does not expect a big turnout.


Since the twin attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils claimed by the Islamic State group, the Muslim community in central Barcelona's neighbourhood of Raval fears an anti-Islam backlash.


"People are very scared," said Miah, 23, as he sat in a small room at the mosque in Raval as a small group of children in an adjoining room studied the Koran.


Raval -- whose name derives from the Arabic word for neighbourhood -- is located just west of Barcelona's bustling Las Ramblas boulevard where a van ploughed into pedestrians on Thursday, killing 13 and injuring dozens of others. Just hours later, another person died in a similar attack in the holiday town of Cambrils, where police shot five suspects dead.


"There is a lot of fear, people don't go out. Very few people come to pray. Normally we are about 40 people, last night we weren't even 15 and this morning 10," said Miah, who moved to Barcelona nine years ago from Bangladesh.


Spain's Muslim community has until now been spared from the islamophobia that has swept parts of Europe.


Far-right parties remain barely visible and just four percent of Spaniards consider immigration to be a problem, according to a survey by the government's Centre for Sociological Research (CIS).


But the string of attacks in Europe, claimed by the so-called Islamic State group, has sparked a rise in hate incidents.


The number of recorded cases jumped from just 48 in 2014 to 534 in 2015, according to a campaign group, the Citizens' Platform Against Islamophobia.


And Muslims fear it will get worse following the twin attacks.


- 'You feel bad' -


The narrow and normally noisy streets of Raval were silent on Saturday morning.


Immigrants account for roughly half of the densely-populated neighbourhood's population, with a huge number of people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco.


"(The) Spaniards treat us well, they help us, they make us feel at home," said Raja.


But just minutes after the attack in Barcelona, he said he could feel that something was changing. When he fled the Ramblas area in the wake of the attacks he was stopped by police.


"It's normal, they saw me with my beard and robe and they stopped me. But you feel bad," he said.


"We fear that the same will happen here as in France, Britain or other places" where far-right parties have grown strongly in recent years, said Islam Zahid, 22, who runs a small supermarket in back streets of Raval. Children could be heard playing football in the background.


About 100 members of Barcelona's Muslim community, many of them tearful, gathered on Las Ramblas on Saturday to demonstrate against the twin attacks in Spain.


"They are not Muslims, they are terrorists" and "Islam is peace," they shouted.


- 'Barbarians' -


Marzouk Rouj, a 39-year-old Moroccan construction worker who went to the demonstration with his daughter, said the bloodshed left him "shattered".


"I have lived more years here than in my (own) country. My children go to school here and I don't want people to look at them negatively because of some barbarians," said Rouj, who moved to Spain from Nador in northern Morocco when he was just 16.


Several Muslims left flowers at an impromptu shrine on Las Ramblas.


"In the end Muslims are the main victims, for the deaths as well as for the social pressure," said Xantal Genovart, vice president of the Association of Catalan Muslim women.


Catalonia is home to about a quarter of Spain's 1.9 million Muslims -- and it is also a centre of jihadism, according to experts.


Even so, Mounir Benjelloun, president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities, remains optimistic.


"I think that Spain will know how to handle this and will separate the culprits from the rest so a xenophobic message does not prosper," he said.


The initial signs are encouraging. A small group of anti-Islam protesters who turned up at Las Ramblas on Friday were forced to leave after passers-by began to shout "No racists" at them.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/muslim-wo...083140157.html


World
Muslim Woman in Hijab Attacked by Madrid Mob in Possible Hate Crime Following Barcelona Attack
Newsweek Conor Gaffey,Newsweek 23 hours ago

A group of young men attacked a Muslim woman wearing a hijab in Spain’s capital Madrid on Wednesday, in what police think may be motivated by the Islamist-inspired attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.


The woman, who was in her twenties, was assaulted in the Usera district in the south of the Spanish capital, El Mundo reported.


Three unknown assailants attacked and insulted the woman, who was reportedly left with bruises and a mild concussion. She was treated at the scene and was later taken to hospital.


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The municipal police’s diversity management unit, which specializes in hate crimes, has taken over the investigation into the case.


Muslim woman Barcelona
A woman embraces a Muslim resident of Barcelona holding a placard reading "We are against any injustice" as they demonstrate on the Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona, to protest against terrorism and in tribute to the victims of the Barcelona attack on August 19. LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty


The incident comes a week after two attacks in Catalonia killed a total of 15 people. Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old who was born in Morocco and lived in the Catalonian city of Ripoll, drove a van into civilians on the popular Barcelona tourist street of Las Ramblas on August 17, killing 13 people.


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Another man was later stabbed in a carjacking linked to Abouyaaqoub’s attempt to escape; the attacker was shot dead by police on August 21.


Later the same day, a group of five attackers drove a car into pedestrians in the seaside resort of Cambrils, 62 miles down the coast from Barcelona. One woman was killed and police shot dead the attackers.


The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for both attacks. The attacks were the first in Spain to be claimed by ISIS and the deadliest militant attacks since the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and were perpetrated by Al-Qaeda.


Spanish police have stepped up surveillance in major mosques in Madrid following the latest attacks.


There has already been some backlash against Muslims in Spain following the Catalonia attacks. A Seville mosque was daubed with anti-Muslim graffiti that included threats to behead Muslims with machetes, while a mosque in Granada was attacked with flares on Saturday by a group of people chanting xenophobic statements.


Just under 2 million Muslims live in Spain, making up around 4 percent of the total population.