Several people have been run over in a van attack in Las Ramblas district of Barcelona, Spain. The police are reporting this is a terrorist attack. The driver immediately fled on foot and reports are coming in of armed men holed up in a Turkish restaurant. Hostages have been taken. Metro and Railway stations in the area are closed and people are warned to stay away from Placa Catalunya.
A white van was the object of the attack and <i>El Pais</i> newspaper reports police have reported 20 wounded and one dead. A video acquired from social media of the attack shows bodies all across the pavement with both emergency responders and civilians attending to injured on the ground. Ministry of Interior reports via Twitter: “There has just been a massive crash on the Ramblas in Barcelona by a person with a van. There are injured."
<a href=”http://news.sky.com/story/van-hits-crowd-in-massive-crash-in-barcelona-10992725”> Sky News reports a terror attack in Spain</a>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Two people are thought to have been killed in the van crash that Barcelona police say was a "terrorist attack". Here's what we know <a href="https://t.co/v5UjHlElYx">pic.twitter.com/v5UjHlElYx</a></p>— Sky News (@SkyNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/898210908932943872">August 17, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The streets are currently cordoned off and shops in the area are shut down until the situation is resolved.
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Mike Mawhinney, producer for Sky News just reported:
“All around Las Ramblas, about three blocks off it, the streets are being completely locked off, people pushed back.
"They’re searching the area for anything else, so obviously there’s the story you just mentioned about the restaurant, obviously a possible development.
"When I arrived on the scene I saw two wounded people lying on the pavement, one was getting picked up and put onto a stretcher and lowered onto the ambulance and stretchered out, that looked quite serious.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/1e28023bb14530f27878738ca0e442b3021022a76c236b7a85ac80f3a38f0000.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
"The other seemed to be OK and was moving and later was being loaded up onto an ambulance and taken out.
The Sun reports some witnesses having heard gun shots, but this has not yet been confirmed. According to the British Foreign Office guidance for Spain: "Terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in Spain."Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners.
"Spanish police have disrupted a number of groups suspected of recruiting individuals to travel to Syria and Iraq from 2015 to the present date.
"Some of them expressed an intention to carry out attacks in Europe.
"There’s a heightened threat of terrorist attack globally against UK interests and British nationals from groups or individuals motivated by the conflict in Iraq and Syria."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The latest on the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Barcelona?src=hash">#Barcelona</a> van crash: According to reports, two armed men have "entrenched" themselves in a bar <a href="https://t.co/y47ffoAif2">https://t.co/y47ffoAif2</a> <a href="https://t.co/I2mDMEEebg">pic.twitter.com/I2mDMEEebg</a></p>— Sky News (@SkyNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/898216248357433344">August 17, 2017</a></blockquote>
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