BARCELONA ATTACK | Police fatally shoot van suspect

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Police in Spain say fugitive van attack suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub has been shot dead.

Police outside Barcelona shot down Abouyaaqoub, who was wearing a possible explosives vest, the regional police force said Monday, as the manhunt intensified.

Regional police said officers shot Abouyaaqoub in Subirats, a small town 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Barcelona, while investigating a “suspicious person” there. A bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach the suspect, Catalan police said.

Abouyaaqoub, 22, has been the target of an international manhunt since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona.

Authorities said Monday they now have evidence that Abouyaaqoub drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

They said Abouyaaqoub, who was born in Morocco and has Spanish residency, also is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Roser Ventura, whose father owns a vineyard between the towns of Sadurni d’Anoia and Subirats, said he alerted the regional Catalan police when they spotted a car crossing their property at high speed.

“The police told us to leave the premises and go home. We heard a helicopter flying around and many police cars coming toward the gas station that is some 600 meters from the property,” Ventura said.