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Spanish police: terrorists plotted even bigger assaults

MADRID, Aug 18 (KUNA) -- The terrorists who carried out Spain's twin terror car attacks on Thursday and early Friday had been planning even more deadly attacks than the ones they did and claimed the lives of at least 14 people.
Spanish police believe that there is a link between the two terrorist car rampages and an explosion in a house in the small town of Alcanar, some 200 kilometers south of Barcelona, in Catalonia's Tarragona province on Wednesday night.
Police initially suspected the property housed an illegal drug laboratory but later realized that the gas canisters inside had been manipulated.
"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police.
Trapero said that several elements of the investigation connected the explosion "in a clear way, and with little room for doubt" to the attack in Barcelona.
He argued that the explosion prompted suspects to act quickly on "more rudimentary" attacks. These involved the vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils.
The man suspected of carrying out the Barcelona van attack was shot early Friday along with other terrorists in Cambrils newspaper El Pais and other media reported Friday citing police sources.
Police also announced that the man who carried out Barcelona attack was killed by police early Friday. The man was named as Moussa Oukabir aged 17.
Thirteen people were killed and more than 100 others injured when a driver ploughed a rented van through crowds of people in Las Ramblas a popular thoroughfare in the centre of Barcelona late Thursday.
Hours later another vehicle hit pedestrians in the seaside resort of Cambrils killing one person. (end) hnd.ibi