BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) — The Catalan president on Monday (August 21) confirmed that police had shot dead a man they suspect was the Islamist militant who drove a van into a Barcelona crowd last week.
“Just before five o’clock in the afternoon the Catalan police shot dead Younes Abouyaaqoub, driver of the van and direct perpetrator of the attack in Barcelona on Thursday causing the death of 14 people,” Carles Puigdemont told a news conference in Barcelona.
Ending a five-day manhunt, police tracked 22-year-old Abouyaaqoub to a rural area near Barcelona.
They said they shot him after he held up what appeared to be an explosives belt.
Abouyaaqoub had been on the run since Thursday (August 17) after he drove at high speed into throngs of people strolling along Barcelona’s most famous avenue, Las Ramblas, in Spain’s worst militant attack in over a decade.
