THE terrorist who drove a hired van into crowds on Las Ramblas in Barcelona killing 13 people has been shot dead in the town of Altos de Subirat after threatening police with activating a suicide belt.
Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, was surrounded by the Mossos d'Esquadra – Catalunya's armed police – at around 16.30 today (Monday) and displayed a bomb waistcoat whilst shouting Allah-u Akbar, meaning 'God is great'.
Officers opened fire and he was killed instantly.
Photographs of Abouyaaqoub distributed via the media and calling for the public to give any information they could leading to his whereabouts bore fruit when a woman in the village of Subirats raised the alarm, believing she had seen him in the area.
Realising the police were on his trail, Abouyaaqoub fled into nearby vineyards, but was swiftly surrounded.
He has been identified as the driver who killed 13 people and injured 132 on the Ramblas before dumping the van and vanishing into the Boquería Market.
Abouyaaqoub has since been named as the man who ploughed into police at a checkpoint in Sant Just Desvern just outside Barcelona later that same night, injuring a female officer.
He fled once again, and another man was found dead inside the vehicle.
The deceased turned out to be Pau Pérez, 34, the car's owner, who had been stabbed to death when Abouyaaqoub hijacked his vehicle in order to escape or carry out further attacks.
Abouyaaqoub is thought to be the last of the Catalunya terror suspects, with five others having been shot dead by police in Cambrils, four in custody and two having been killed when they accidentally blew up their house in Alcanar (Tarragona province).
They were all part of the same cell and are believed to have been 'radicalised' by a rogue Iman known as Abdelbaki Es-Satty at their local mosque in Ripoll (Girona province).
Police say the Alcanar blast averted a far greater tragedy: the gang was planning to crash into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils in vans loaded up with butane gas bottles and other explosive devices, but their weapons were destroyed when the house they were using as a base blew up.
According to the Mossos, Abouyaaqoub's suicide vest was fake.
Abouyaaqoub's mother, through an interpreter, had pleaded publicly with her son to give himself up.
She said she did not truly believe he had been behind the terror attacks, but would 'rather seen him in prison than dead'.
At the same time, a female cousin of the now-deceased attacker said Es-Satty had 'radicalised' and 'manipulated' the group of young men, whom she said 'appeared very normal' and 'knew nothing about Islam' until they became sucked in by the indoctrination of the so-called Iman.
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