BARCELONA — Las Ramblas regained some normality Monday, with throngs of people walking up and down, tourists arriving and residents going about their daily business. However mourners were still weeping and hugging each other as they visited the main memorial site of the Barcelona attack and crowds of people continued to lay flowers, candles and heart-shaped balloons at the top of Las Ramblas.
The death toll in the country’s two vehicle attacks has been raised to 15. The fugitive in the Barcelona van attack carjacked a man and stabbed him to death Thursday night as he made his getaway, Spanish officials said.
Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, has been the target of an international manhunt since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona. Authorities say they now have evidence he drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.
Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of his 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.
Abouyaaqoub is believed to have made his getaway in the stolen car.
Regional authorities said Monday that 50 people are still hospitalized from both attacks, nine of them in critical condition.
Catalonia’s regional president said regional and local authorities rejected the Spanish government’s suggestion to place traffic barriers to protect the Las Ramblas promenade because they deemed them “inefficient.”
Carles Puigdemont told La Sexta television the barriers wouldn’t have prevented vehicles from entering the promenade at other points – and he said closing off Las Ramblas was impractical because emergency vehicles still needed access.
Meanwhile in Finland Friday’s stabbings in Turku are under investigation as likely terror acts, and Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, is eying ties to the Spain attacks.
The knife attack in western Finland left two people dead and seven others wounded. The attack was “a likely terror act,” Finland’s intelligence agency said Saturday.
The suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker, was shot and wounded in the thigh by police during his rampage Friday in the city of Turku. He was hospitalized under guard, still in intensive care Saturday, and is being investigated for murder with possible terrorist intent, police said.
Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila told a news conference that if confirmed as an act of terrorism, “it’s the first time Finland has encountered such a terror act.”
“Finland is not an island,” he said. “We have feared something like this but we have been prepared,” Sipila said, calling the attack “a cowardly act.”
With files from The Associated Press
