The centre of Barcelona remains in lockdown. Crowds of onlookers have gathered at the police tapes that cordon off a large area of the city around Las Ramblas and Plaça de Catalunya.
But most residents have stayed at home, busy checking up on friends and family. Aside from the clatter of a helicopter overhead the streets of this normally lively and noisy city are empty.
Rebeca, who works in the Hotel Lloret, said:
It’s tragic, I saw people on the ground who had been run over and other people running and crying. The van drove down the centre running over everyone. We can’t go out now and our guests are scared and crying because they don’t know where their relatives are.
Albert Tort, 47, a nurse who lives in Las Ramblas, said he witnessed the attack.
The police wouldn’t let me through until I identified myself as a health worker. What I saw was a total disaster. I saw at least six people dead and I tried to revive a young man but it was impossible.
Ellen Vercamm, who is on holiday in the city, said:
We were just outside the Hard Rock Café on our way to the Rambla when we saw a white van crashing into people. It threw people into the air.
Meanwhile Felipe VI, the Spanish king, tweeted: “All of Spain is Barcelona. Las Ramblas will be for everyone once again.”
Donald Trump responded to the Barcelona attack by reviving an already debunked anecdote about a US general dipping bullets in pig’s blood to fight Islamic militants over a hundred years ago.
After a relatively conventional response to the attack in which he went on to Twitter to call on the people of Barcelona to be “tough and strong” and offer US help, he posted another, more cryptic tweet 45 minutes later saying: “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”
Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!
The tweet echoed a highly dubious claim Trump made at an election rally in South Carolina in February 2016, in which he talked admiringly about a counter-insurgency in the Philippines conducted by General John Pershing between 1909 and 1913, when he was governor of Moro province.
He said at the rally:
They were having terrorism problems, just like we do. And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem.
This account of Pershing’s actions has circulated on the internet since 2001, but US historians say there is very little if any evidence to support it.
What we know so far about the Las Ramblas terror attack
A white Fiat van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on one of Barcelona’s most popular boulevards late on Thursday afternoon, killing 13 people in what Spanish police called a “terrorist attack”.
Thirteen people have been killed, and at least 50 injured, Catalonia’s interior minister Joaquim Forn has confirmed.
According to early reports, the vehicle sped down the centre of the 1km-long road, which is usually packed with people, until it hit a newspaper kiosk and stopped.
Television pictures showed people lying on the ground and a crashed van that had stopped on top of a Joan Míro mosaic halfway down Las Ramblas, an area which is very popular with tourists.
Witnesses described scenes of chaos and panic as hundreds of people tried to flee.
Around 80 people sheltered in a church near the incident, while others hid in shops and restaurants.
Police in the Spanish region of Catalonia where Barcelona is located said on Twitter they have arrested one man.
Spanish police have released a photograph of the man alleged to have rented the van used in the attack. He is identified as Driss Oukabir.
Initially there were reports that one suspect had fled to a nearby bar, but this was later denied.
One witness told Spain’s TVE television he saw the suspect when the van stopped. “It was a person in their 20s, he is very young, brown hair, a slim face.”
Emergency services quickly arrived on the scene and cordoned off the area, with several ambulances and police vehicles responding.
The city also closed down metro stations in the area, with authorities telling people to stay away from the area.
The prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, cancelled his holiday in Galicia, north-west Spain, to return to Madrid. He tweeted that he was in contact with the local authorities, saying the priority was to help the victims and facilitate the work of security forces.
World leaders have condemned the attack and sent condolences to the victims. Theresa May said: “The UK stands with Spain against terror.”
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said he is doing all he can to identify whether any British people need help in Barcelona.
The office of German chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the “revolting attack” in Barcelona.
Her spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a tweet: “We are thinking with profound sadness of the victims of the revolting attack in Barcelona - with solidarity and frienship alongside the Spanish people.”
In tiefer Trauer sind wir bei den Opfern des widerwärtigen Anschlags in #Barcelona - in Solidarität + Freundschaft an d. Seite der Spanier.
Jason Burke has written a snap analysis on the events in Barcelona, focusing on how painfully familiar the nature of the attack is.
... The use of vehicles as weapons is now an established tactic by extremists, one of the dozen or so employed in the last two decades that should be considered a standard part of the terrorist arsenal. In the past 13 months, there have been similar attacks in France, Germany, Sweden and the UK.
A woman was killed by a car driven at speed by a rightwing extremist in the US last week in slightly different circumstances.
The precise motivation and the identity of the Barcelona attackers will become clear in the next few hours. So far there has been no claim of responsibility from Islamic State. These can take between eight and 48 hours, if they come at all. In recent months, such claims have become highly unreliable. Individuals close to Isis and active on social media have been celebrating the Barcelona attack, but this does not indicate a connection to the group.
Tactics spread among militants when they are seen to work. There is no skill needed to drive a vehicle into a crowd, nor any difficulty involved in obtaining one. This makes a car, van or lorry an ideal weapon for today’s terrorists, who are often inspired by a group but are not actually part of it, and for the most part, lack the training and means necessary for more complex attacks.
