Image copyright AFP Image caption A witness near a petrol station tipped off police

Police have shot dead the main suspect in last Thursday's Barcelona attack, Younes Abouyaaqoub.

They believe he was the driver of a van which careered down the Las Ramblas avenue, killing 13 and injuring more than 100 others.

He was killed some 25 miles (40km) west of Barcelona near a sewage treatment works following a tip off.

Abouyaaqoub, wearing a fake explosive belt, is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest").

An extensive manhunt was already under way when police closed in on the Subirats area, close to Sant Sadurní d'Anoia.

A petrol station employee spotted Abouyaaqoub and called the police who found him hiding in vineyards.

After he was shot, bomb disposal officers used a robot to examine the fake explosive belt. This led to some delay before Moroccan-born Abouyaaqoub could be officially identified.

Local residents described seeing some 20 police cars heading for the scene and helicopters circling.

Police said the investigation was still international in scope.

At an earlier news conference, police described Abouyaaqoub's escape from the scene of the Barcelona attack on foot to the outskirts of the city where he hijacked a car and stabbed its driver.

CCTV footage in Spanish media appears to show him walking through a market district.

Image copyright Catalan police/El Pais

The man murdered in the car was named as Pau Pérez, 34, from Vilafranca - the 15th victim of the Barcelona bloodshed and a later attack in the resort of Cambrils.

A woman died in Cambrils when a car was driven into pedestrians and five suspected jihadists were killed at the scene by police early on Friday.

Police have also confirmed that an imam, suspected of radicalising the young men who carried out the attacks, died in what is believed to have been an accidental explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar, south of Barcelona, that was being used as a bomb factory.

The remains of one other person found at the house are still being examined.

The terror cell behind the attacks was 12 strong. Police say eight suspects are now dead and four are in custody.

The group had apparently been planning three co-ordinated attacks using home-made bombs, but were thwarted by the Alcanar blast. Police found about 120 gas canisters at the Alcanar site.

Family members of the dead suspects said they believed Imam Es Satty had radicalised several young people in their home town of Ripoll, north of Barcelona.

Spanish media outlets say he had spent some time in prison, and had met prisoners involved or linked with the 2004 Madrid train bombings in which 191 people died.

He had also stayed in Belgium for some three months last year, where he had been searching for work, including in Vilvoorde, a small town of 42,000 people from which more than 20 jihadists departed for Syria in 2014.

An official who works on de-radicalisation in Belgium has told the BBC that Es Satty tried to secure a post at a mosque near Brussels but the elders decided he should not be allowed to preach due to his "radicalised and polarising" approach.

The mosque asked police to perform a background security check but this did not throw up any specific areas of concern.

Catalan officials said that all 15 victims had now been identified and their families notified.

The Ripoll cell

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Inside the pretty town hiding terror suspects

Shot dead west of Barcelona: Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, presumed driver of van on Las Ramblas

Shot dead in Cambrils: Said Aallaa, 18, Moussa Oukabir, 18, Houssaine Abouyaaqoub, 19, (brother of Younes), Omar Hychami, 21 and Mohamed Hychami, 24

Arrested: Driss Oukabir, 28, (brother of Moussa), Mohamed Houli Chemlal, Salah al-Karib, 34, and Mohammed Aallaa, 27

Human remains found at Alcanar explosion site: Abdelbaki Es Satty, Rupoll imam said to have inspired the cell; Youssef Aallaa, presumed but not confirmed (brother of Said Aallaa)

So-called Islamic State (IS) said it had carried out the Las Ramblas and Cambrils attacks, though it is not clear whether any of the attackers were directly connected to the group or simply inspired by it.</s>BARCELONA, Spain (CBSNewYork) – The man who police believe was behind the wheel in the deadly van attack on pedestrians in Barcelona last week was shot dead Monday.

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, was shot in the town of Subirats, about 28 miles west of Barcelona.

Police believe he may have been wearing an explosives belt when he was shot and are using a robot to examine the possible device.

Abouyaaqoub is believed to have driven the van that killed 13 pedestrians and injured more than 120. He’s also suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death while fleeing.

Abouyaaqoub was the target of an international manhunt following the attack.

Nine people remain in critical condition following the Barcelona attack.</s>Barcelona: Spanish police on Monday shot dead a man who could be Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected driver of a van that mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona, amid a massive manhunt for the Moroccan national described as dangerous and likely armed.

“They have shot dead a suspect who could be the perpetrator of the attack,” a person close to the probe told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Regional police confirmed a man wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt had been killed in Subirats, a village about 60 kilometres (37 miles) away from Barcelona, without identifying the individual.

Bomb disposal units have been dispatched to the site.

Earlier Monday, police had launched an appeal for information about the 22-year-old fugitive, believed to be the last remaining member of a 12-man cell suspected of plotting last week’s deadly attacks.

The other suspects have been killed by police or detained after the vehicle rampages in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the assaults, believed to be its first in Spain.

Authorities on Monday raised the death toll to 15, confirming that Pau Perez, a 34-year-old man found stabbed to death in a Ford Focus outside Barcelona on Friday, was killed by Abouyaaqoub.

The police had fired at the car as it forced its way through a checkpoint shortly after the Barcelona carnage, and later found Perez in the vehicle.

Investigators believe the victim was the owner of the car, which was hijacked by Abouyaaqoub to make his getaway.

Describing Abouyaaqoub as around 1.8 metres (five feet, 11 inches) tall, police tweeted four photographs of the man with short black hair, including three pictures in which he was wearing a black and white striped T-shirt.

He is “dangerous and could be armed,” police in Catalonia said.

Spanish authorities were also officially notifying European police of the identity of the suspect to enable the launch of a Europe-wide manhunt.

Investigators seeking to unravel the terror cell have homed in on the small border town of Ripoll at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains.

Several suspects including Abouyaaqoub grew up or lived in the town.

Moroccan imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, aged in his 40s, has also come under scrutiny as he is believed to have radicalised youths in Ripoll.

Police raided more homes in Ripoll on Monday, Catalonia’s regional interior minister Joaquim Forn said.

Police said the imam had spent time in prison and had once been in contact with a suspect wanted on terrorism charges but was never himself charged with terror-related incidents.

In Belgium, the mayor of the Vilvorde region told AFP that Satty spent time in the Brussels suburb of Machelen—a district next to the city’s airport—between January and March 2016.

On the other side of Brussels, the Molenbeek suburb has gained notoriety as a hotbed of international jihadists after the Brussels bombings in March 2016 and the Paris attacks in November 2015.

In the Moroccan town of M’rirt, relatives of Abouyaaqoub have accused the imam of radicalising the young man as well as his brother Houssein.

“Over the last two years, Younes and Houssein began to radicalise under the influence of this imam,” their grandfather told AFP.

A neighbour close to the Abouyaaqoub family, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the imam “had recruited Moroccans of Ripoll and planned the attacks”.

But Ali Assid, president of the Annour Islamic community that runs the Ripoll mosque where Satty was preaching, said the imam “never sent a radical message, all he preached was really Islam. If he is behind all that, there he must be showing us one face in the mosque and showing another face outside.”

Assid said Satty had parted ways with the mosque in late June after Ramadan, as he wanted a vacation of three months -- a request that the group did not agree to.

The imam has been missing since Tuesday. On Saturday, police raided his apartment. They have raised the possibility that he died in an explosion on Wednesday evening at a house believed to be the suspects’ bomb factory, where police uncovered a massive cache of 120 gas canisters.

The suspected jihadists had been preparing bombs for “one or more attacks in Barcelona”, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters, revealing that traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP)—a homemade explosive that is an IS hallmark—had also been found.

The accidental explosion in the house in Alcanar, south of Barcelona, may have forced the suspects to modify their plans.

Instead, they used a vehicle to smash into crowds on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard as it was thronged with tourists, killing 13 people and injuring about 100.

Several hours later, a similar attack in the seaside town of Cambrils left one woman dead. Police shot dead the five attackers, some of whom were wearing fake explosive belts and carrying knives.</s>Sign up for one of our email newsletters.

Regional police in Spain have confirmed that fugitive Barcelona van suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub has been shot dead in a small town outside the city.

Police say he wore what appeared to be an explosives belt when he was shot in Subirats, 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Barcelona.

Abouyaaqoub had been the focus of an intense manhunt after authorities say he used a van to mow down pedestrians in Barcelona's famous Las Ramblas promenade on Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring over 120. Police also say he stabbed a driver to death and hijacked his car Thursday night in his getaway.</s>A Spanish newspaper reports that the fugitive in the city’s van attack has been captured

A police operation was underway Monday in an area west of Barcelona, and a Spanish newspaper reports that the fugitive in the city’s van attack has been captured.

Regional police said officers shot a man wearing a possible explosives belt in Subirats, a small town 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Barcelona.

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, has been the target of an international manhunt since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona. Authorities said Monday they now have evidence he drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

Abouyaaqoub then is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

La Vanguardia newspaper reported Abouyaaqoub was captured Sant Sadurni d’Anoia; the Catalan police tweeted that there was an ongoing police operation but did not confirm Abouyaaqoub’s capture in the area of Subirats about 45 kilometres (28 miles)outside Barcelona.

Abouyaaqoub is believed to have made his getaway in the stolen car with the body of its dead owner, Pau Perez, still inside.

Police have “scientific evidence” showing Abouyaaqoub drove the speeding van in Las Ramblas and also killed Perez on Thursday night, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said Monday. He said the suspect walked through Barcelona for about 90 minutes after the van attack — through the famed La Boqueria market and nearly to Barcelona University — before hijacking the car.

Perez was parking his car, a Ford Focus, in a lot between 6:10 p.m. and 6:20 p.m. Abouyaaqoub stabbed him before 6:32 p.m., put him in the car’s rear seats and drove away, Trapero said.

Trapero said Perez was already dead when Abouyaaqoub then rammed the car through a police checkpoint minutes later and police opened fire on his car.

The suspect ran over a police officer as the car evaded the checkpoint. About 7 p.m., police found the car and Perez’s body 3 kilometres (nearly 2 miles) away from the checkpoint, near Sant Just Desvern, a town west of Barcelona, but Abouyaaqoub was nowhere to be found.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais published images Monday of what it says is Abouyaaqoub making a getaway on foot after the van attack. The three images show a slim man wearing sunglasses walking through the La Boqueria market.

Abouyaaqoub escaped and has not returned to his home in Ripoll, said Trapero. The manhunt for him reaches well beyond Spain’s borders. Four other suspects have been arrested.

Regional authorities said Monday that 50 people are still hospitalized from both attacks, nine of them in critical condition.

Abouyaaqoub was believed to be the lone attacker on the run by Sunday, but authorities hadn’t confirmed his identity because they were having difficulty identifying the remains of at least two extremists who died Wednesday in an explosion at a house in Alcanar where explosives were being prepared. The explosion destroyed the house, but police found remnants of over 100 butane gas tanks and materials needed for the TATP explosive, which has been used previously by Islamic State militants.

Those discoveries, and reports that Abouyaaqoub had rented three vans, suggested the militant cell was making plans for an even more massive attack on the city.

Catalonia’s regional president, meanwhile, said regional and local authorities rejected the Spanish government’s suggestion to place traffic barriers to protect the Las Ramblas promenade because they deemed them “inefficient.”

Carles Puigdemont told La Sexta television the barriers wouldn’t have prevented vehicles from entering the promenade at other points — and he said closing off Las Ramblas was impractical because emergency vehicles still needed access.

On Monday, mourners were still weeping and hugging each other as they visited the main memorial site of the Barcelona attack. Crowds of people continued to lay flowers, candles and heart-shaped balloons at the top of Las Ramblas and at other smaller tributes where the van created such carnage.

Las Ramblas regained some normality Monday, with throngs of people walking up and down, tourists arriving and residents going about their daily business.

“We have to stand strong in front of these betrayers, assassins, terrorists,” said resident Monserrat Mora. “Because Barcelona is strong and they will not be able to prevail with us.”

Associated Press writer Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Lori Hinnant in Barcelona contributed.

Joseph Wilson And Aritz Parra, The Associated Press</s>SUBIRATS, Spain (AP) — A man thought to be the driver in the Barcelona van attack was shot dead by Spanish police Monday after authorities announced he also was suspected of killing the owner of a hijacked getaway car. The fugitive was wearing a bomb belt, authorities said.

Younes Abouyaaqoub was shot when officers confronted him in Subirats, a rural area known for its vineyards about 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Barcelona, police in Spain’s Catalonia region said. A bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach him, police said.

Abouyaaqoub, 22, had been the target of an international manhunt that had raised fears throughout the region since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona.

Authorities said Monday they now have evidence that Abouyaaqoub drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

They said Abouyaaqoub, who was born in Morocco and has Spanish residency, also is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Roser Ventura, whose father owns a vineyard between the towns of Sadurni d’Anoia and Subirats, said he alerted the regional Catalan police when they spotted a car crossing their property at high speed.

“The police told us to leave the premises and go home. We heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming toward the gas station that is some 600 meters from the property,” Ventura said.

Earlier Monday, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said investigators have “scientific evidence” showing Abouyaaqoub drove the speeding van in Las Ramblas and killed the owner of a hijacked sedan on Thursday night.

He said the suspect walked through Barcelona for about 90 minutes after the van attack — through the famed La Boqueria market and nearly to Barcelona University — before hijacking the car. Abouyaaqoub is believed to have made his getaway in the stolen car with Perez’s body inside.

Perez was parking his car, a Ford Focus, in a lot between 6:10 p.m. and 6:20 p.m. Abouyaaqoub stabbed him before 6:32 p.m., put him in the car’s rear seats and drove away, Trapero said.

Trapero said Perez was already dead when Abouyaaqoub then rammed the car through a police checkpoint minutes later and police opened fire on his car.

The suspect ran over a police officer as the car evaded the checkpoint. About 7 p.m., police found the car and Perez’s body 3 kilometers (nearly 2 miles) away from the checkpoint, near Sant Just Desvern, a town west of Barcelona, but Abouyaaqoub was nowhere to be found.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais published images Monday of what it said was Abouyaaqoub leaving the van attack site on foot. The three images show a slim man wearing sunglasses walking through the La Boqueria market.

Abouyaaqoub escaped and had not returned to his home in Ripoll, said Trapero. The manhunt for him reached well beyond Spain’s borders. Four other suspects have been arrested.

Regional authorities said Monday that 48 people were still hospitalized from both attacks, eight of them in critical condition.

Abouyaaqoub was believed to be the lone attacker on the run by Sunday. Authorities hadn’t confirmed his identity because they were having difficulty identifying the remains of at least two extremists who died Wednesday in an explosion at a house in Alcanar where explosives were being prepared.

The explosion destroyed the house, but police found remnants of over 100 butane gas tanks and materials needed for the TATP explosive, which has been used previously by Islamic State militants.

Those discoveries, and reports that Abouyaaqoub had rented three vans, suggested the militant cell was making plans for an even more massive attack on the city.

Catalonia’s regional president, meanwhile, said regional and local authorities rejected the Spanish government’s suggestion to place traffic barriers to protect the Las Ramblas promenade because they deemed them “inefficient.”

Carles Puigdemont told La Sexta television the barriers wouldn’t have prevented vehicles from entering the promenade at other points — and he said closing off Las Ramblas was impractical because emergency vehicles still needed access.

On Monday, crowds of people continued to lay flowers, candles and heart-shaped balloons at the top of pedestrian promenade where the van struck and at other smaller tributes.

Las Ramblas also regained some normality Monday, with throngs of people walking up and down, tourists arriving and residents going about their daily business.

“We have to stand strong in front of these betrayers, assassins, terrorists,” said resident Monserrat Mora. “Because Barcelona is strong and they will not be able to prevail with us.”

Associated Press writer Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Lori Hinnant in Barcelona contributed.</s>Catalonia: Younes Abouyaaqoub, the man identified as the driver of the van that mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona, killing 13, may have been killed on Monday.

Spanish police on Monday killed a man who could be the alleged fugitive driver, a source close to the probe said.

"They have shot dead a suspect who could be the perpetrator of the attack," the source, who declined to be named, told AFP.

Police in Catalonia confirmed that a man wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt had been killed in Subirats, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) away from Barcelona, but did not identify him.

Earlier, in a tweet, police in Catalonia had said that they knew who the driver was without naming him, but regional interior minister Joaquim Forn had said in a radio interview that "everything suggests the van driver is Younes Abouyaaqoub."

Spanish police had also warned that the suspected driver was dangerous and likely armed.

"He is dangerous and could be armed. He is sought as the alleged perpetrator of the Barcelona attack on August 17. He was the van driver," the Departament d'Interior had tweeted.

Describing Abouyaaqoub as around 1.80 metres (five feet, 11 inches) tall, police tweeted four photographs of the man with short black hair, including three pictures in which he was wearing a black and white striped T-shirt.

The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the assaults, believed to be its first in Spain.

Meanwhile, authorities on Monday raised the death toll of the attacks to 15, confirming that Pau Perez, a 34-year-old man found stabbed dead in a Ford Focus outside Barcelona on Friday, was killed by Abouyaaqoub, as per AFP.

The police had fired at the car as it forced the checkpoint shortly after the Barcelona carnage, and later found Perez stabbed dead in the vehicle.

Police carried out more raids overnight at homes in the town of Ripoll, where many of the suspects lived, Forn said.

Others thought to be part of a 12-strong cell have been arrested, shot by police or killed in an explosion at a house in Catalonia a day before Thursday`s van attack, as per Reuters.

Investigators seeking to unravel the terror cell have homed in on the small border town of Ripoll, at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains.

Several of the suspects including Abouyaaqoub grew up or lived in the town.

A Moroccan imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, aged in his 40s, has also come under scrutiny as he is believed to have radicalised youths in Ripoll.

Police said the imam had spent time in prison and had once been in contact with a suspect wanted on terrorism charges but was never charged with terror related incidents himself.

The imam has been missing since Tuesday. On Saturday, police raided his apartment. They have raised the possibility that he died in an explosion on Wednesday evening at a house believed to be the suspects` bomb factory, where police uncovered a massive cache of 120 gas canisters.

The suspected jihadists had been preparing bombs for "one or more attacks in Barcelona", regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters, revealing that traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) - a homemade explosive that is an ISIS hallmark - had also been found.

The suspects accidentally caused an explosion at the house on the eve of Thursday`s attack in Barcelona - an error that likely forced them to modify their plans.

Instead, they used a vehicle to smash into crowds on Barcelona`s Las Ramblas boulevard as it was thronged with tourists.</s>BARCELONA: Spanish police hunting for a suspect after the Barcelona van attack that killed 14 people said yesterday they could not rule out that he had slipped over the border into France.

Spanish police said security operations were under way in Catalonia and on the French border as they try to find Moroccan-born Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, who they believe is the only one of 12 suspects still at large.

Others have been arrested, shot by police or killed in an explosion at a house in Catalonia a day before Thursday's van attack on Las Ramblas, Barcelona's most famous boulevard.

"We don't have any specific information on this, but it cannot be ruled out," Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told a news conference in Barcelona when asked if Abouyaaqoub could have crossed into France.

Spanish media have said Abouyaaqoub was suspected of being the driver, who fled after the attack.

Mr Trapero said he could not confirm who was driving, but said investigators believed only one person was in the van.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a van drove through crowds of tourists and local people walking along Las Ramblas, leaving a trail of dead and 120 injured .

Hours later, police shot dead five men wearing fake explosive belts in the Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils after they rammed holidaymakers with a car and stabbed others, killing one woman.

Abouyaaqoub's mother Hannou Ghanimi, speaking to reporters, urged her son to give himself up to police, saying she preferred him being in prison to being dead.

The attacks were the deadliest in Spain for more than a decade.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks - three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla.

One focus of the investigation is on Ripoll, a quiet town set beneath the Pyrenees mountain range and ringed by forested hills, which was the home of a number of the youths, most of Moroccan nationality, who are suspected of involvement.

Three of those killed in Cambrils were aged between 17 and 24. A common thread running through the young men's lives was a local imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, whose landlord said he left Ripoll two days before the attack.

Spanish media have depicted Es Satty as being a possible ring-leader. Papers bearing what appeared to be French names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses were seen by reporters in Es Satty's apartment in Ripoll after it was searched by police.

Mr Trapero said investigators have identified two people from remains found in a house razed in an explosion on Wednesday in Alcanar, southwest of Barcelona, that police believe the suspects were using as a base.

Meanwhile, a British-Australian boy aged seven, who had been reported as missing, was killed in the attack an official said.</s>UPDATE: Catalan Police have confirmed the identity of the person killed to be Barcelona terror attack van driving suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub.

BARCELONA, Spain — Police outside Barcelona shot down a man wearing a possible explosives vest, the regional police force said Monday, as the manhunt intensified for the fugitive in the city’s van attack.

Regional police said officers shot a man wearing a possible explosives belt in Subirats, a small town 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Barcelona, while investigating a “suspicious person” there. A bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach the suspect, Catalan police said.

La Vanguardia newspaper reported that the man shot was Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, who has been the target of an international manhunt since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona.

Authorities said Monday they now have evidence that Abouyaaqoub drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

They said Abouyaaqoub, who was born in Morocco and has Spanish residency, also is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

La Vanguardia newspaper reported Abouyaaqoub was captured. Catalan police tweeted that there was an ongoing police operation in Subirats, but did not confirm if it involved the fugitive suspect.

Roser Ventura, whose father owns a vineyard between the towns of Sadurni d’Anoia and Subirats, said he alerted the regional Catalan police when they spotted a car crossing their property at high speed.

“The police told us to leave the premises and go home. We heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming toward the gas station that is some 600 metres from the property,” Ventura said.

Earlier Monday, regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said investigators have “scientific evidence” showing Abouyaaqoub drove the speeding van in Las Ramblas and killed the owner of a hijacked sedan on Thursday night.

He said the suspect walked through Barcelona for about 90 minutes after the van attack — through the famed La Boqueria market and nearly to Barcelona University — before hijacking the car. Abouyaaqoub is believed to have made his getaway in the stolen car with Perez’s body inside.</s>Barcelona (Spain): Spanish police hunting for a suspect after the Barcelona van attack that killed 13 people said on Sunday they could not rule out that he had slipped over the border into France.

Spanish police said security operations were underway in Catalonia and on the French border as they try to find Moroccan-born Younes Abouyaaqoub (22), who they believe is the only one of 12 suspects still at large.

Others have been arrested, shot by police or killed in an explosion at a house in Catalonia a day before Thursday's van attack on Las Ramblas, Barcelona's most famous boulevard.

“We don't have any specific information on this but it cannot be ruled out,” Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told a news conference in Barcelona when asked if Abouyaaqoub could have crossed into France.

Spanish media have said Abouyaaqoub was suspected of being the driver, who fled after the attack. Trapero said he could not confirm who was driving, but said investigators believed only one person was in the van.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a van travelling at high-speed drove through crowds of tourists and local people walking along Las Ramblas, leaving a trail of dead and 120 injured from 34 countries.

Hours later, police shot dead five men wearing fake explosive belts in the Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils after they rammed holidaymakers with a car and stabbed others, killing one woman.

A police source in France told Reuters on Friday that police there had been looking for the driver of a white Renault Kangoo van that may be connected to the attacks. French media said on Saturday the vehicle had been found near Barcelona.

Abouyaaqoub's mother Hannou Ghanimi, speaking to reporters, urged her son to give himself up to police, saying she preferred him being in prison to being dead.

The attacks were the deadliest in Spain for more than a decade. In little more than a year, militants have used vehicles as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain.

Four people have been arrested so far in connection with the attacks - three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla.

One focus of the investigation is on Ripoll, a quiet town set beneath the Pyrenees mountain range and ringed by forested hills, which was the home of a number of the youths, most of Moroccan nationality, who are suspected of involvement. Three of those killed in Cambrils were aged between 17 and 24.

A common thread running through the young men's lives was a local imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, whose landlord said he left Ripoll two days before the attack.

Spanish media have depicted Es Satty as being a possible ring-leader who indoctrinated the group.

Papers bearing what appeared to be French names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses were seen by reporters in Es Satty's apartment in Ripoll after it was searched by police.

A police document published by Spanish media said two alleged members of the group, Youssef Aallaa and Mohamed Hichamy, now both believed dead, had travelled to Zurich in December 2016.

Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger said Swiss police confirmed that at least one of the Barcelona suspects had been in Zurich in December 2016, although it said it was not yet possible to say if the suspects had any connections to Switzerland. An investigation of the visit was under way, it said.

Trapero said investigators have identified two people from remains found in a house razed in an explosion on Wednesday in Alcanar, southwest of Barcelona, that police believe the suspects were using as a base.

Police believe the explosion foiled the cell's plans to carry out one or more large-scale bombings in Barcelona and led them to rush to stage attacks with vehicles.

More than 100 butane gas cylinders were found at the house, and also, according to Spanish media, traces of TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a highly volatile explosive nicknamed “the mother of Satan” that can be made with easily obtainable household chemicals.

Of the 14 dead in the two attacks, five are Spanish, two are Italians, two are Portuguese, one Belgian, one Canadian and one a US citizen, emergency services and authorities from those countries have confirmed so far.

Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Portuguese prime minister Antonio Costa joined Catalan leaders on Sunday for a service in memory of the victims of the attack at Barcelona's towering Sagrada Familia church, one of the city's landmarks designed by architect Antoni Gaudi.

Spain has kept its security alert level at four, one notch below the maximum level that would indicate another attack was imminent but said it would reinforce security in crowded areas and tourist hotspots.
Spanish police hunting the chief suspect in last Thursday's van attack in Barcelona shoot dead a man to the west of the city who appeared to be wearing an explosive belt.