Toys, flowers and candles are placed on the avenue to mourn for victims in the terrorist attacks in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 19, 2017. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)
Spanish police admitted they still "do not know with precision" the whereabouts of the man who is thought to have driven the van which killed 13 people on Las Ramblas in Barcelona in Thursday's terrorist attacks.
The Major of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) Lluis Trapero said at a press conference that the police have three terrorists "identified with names and surnames." but that although two of the three are almost certainly dead, they don't know "where is the one who is missing."
He explained that authorities were "unable to confirm" the hypothesis that 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, a Moroccan national, was the driver of the van which caused the devastation on Las Ramblas, but admitted the police were "working along those lines," and that Abouyaaqoub's current whereabouts is unknown.
"If we knew he was in Spain and we knew where, we would go and get him. We don't know where he is," explained Trapero, adding police "were not working" on the theory he had left the country.
Trapero also explained that police have found, but are yet to identify, the remains of two people in the town of Alcaner following an explosion in a house there late on Wednesday night.
It is now clear that the 12-man terrorist cell which carried out the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils were using this building in a town in close to Cambrils to prepare a much larger attack involving around 50 butane gas cylinders, before a gas explosion forced them to improvise Thursday's attacks after or during which four were arrested and five were shot dead.
Trapero said the two bodies discovered in Alcaner probably belonged to two of the people police are still searching for: "we can think that at least two (of the three) are dead," he said.
Meanwhile, "none of the 12 terrorists had any previous criminal record, nor was there any intelligence that they could be related to possible terrorist offenses," he commented, adding that 45-year old imam, Abdelbaki es Satti, who has been reported in the press to have been the possible inspiration of the cell, "was not linked to terrorism issues," although he "had some judicial issues (he had served time in jail for selling drugs)" and "had a relation to a person investigated for terrorism in the past."
The Mossos have strengthened their presence on the frontier with France, he said.
