tried to stab people. Five suspects were shot dead by police, while a Spanish woman died in the attack.

In the roughly seven hours of violence that followed the van's entry into the pedestrian boulevard of Las Ramblas on Thursday afternoon, attackers killed 15 people: 13 on Las Ramblas, the Cambrils victim and the man in the hijacked car.

Of the 120 injured on Las Ramblas, nine remain in a critical condition in hospital.

Another two suspected plotters, including an imam thought by police to have helped radicalise his young conspirators, were killed late on Wednesday night, hours before the attacks began, in what is believed to have been an accidental explosion.

Police said there was solid evidence to believe that the imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, was killed in the blast ata house in the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona.

About 120 butane gas cylinders were found there. Police believe the pair was preparing a much larger attack with explosives, but the blast prompted the other militants to adopt a new, less elaborate plan.

Abouyaaqoub began showing more religiously conservative behaviour within the past year, according to family members in his native Morocco. He refused to shake hands with women during a visit to his birthplace in March, they said.

Abouyaaqoub's brother El Houssaine and first cousins Mohamed and Omar Hychami were among those killed by police in Cambrils. They were all originally from the small Moroccan town of Mrirt.

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