Lone knife attack on police station treated as terrorism

Identified as Abdelouahab Taib, 29, originally from Algeria but legally resident in Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona province), the accused burst into the Mossos d'Esquadra, or regional police station at 05.45 shouting, Allahu Akbar ('God is great') and brandishing a knife described as 'huge'.

The Mossos station is just a few metres from Taib's home.

To protect themselves, the on-duty overnight officer was forced to open fire, killing his assailant, and has had to be given counselling to help him through the trauma of having taken a life.

The deceased has no existing criminal record and it is not yet known whether he had become 'radicalised', but it is suspected he was acting alone.

Mossos have been scrupulously searching his house since this morning with the help of sniffer dogs, the forensic police and the GEI and TEDAX explosives specialists.

As a precaution, Taib's neighbours have been evacuated.

His ex-girlfriend, from whom he had been separated for just a week, is being interrogated.

Detectives are also looking into Taib's records from before he moved to Spain to see whether he had been in any trouble with the police in his previous life.

Other than the attacker himself, nobody has been hurt.

The incident came barely 72 hours after the first anniversary of the Barcelona and Cambrils terrorist attacks in which DAESH sympathisers mowed down pedestrians in a van, killing several people including a seven-year-old British-Australian boy on holiday with his mother, who was injured.