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Arrests in Morocco over Links to Barcelona Attackers

Arrests in Morocco over Links to Barcelona Attackers

Thursday, 24 August, 2017 - 08:45
Policemen and medical staff stand at the site where Moroccan suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub was shot on August 21, 2017 near Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, south of Barcelona. AFP PHOTO / LLUIS GENELLUIS GENE

Moroccan authorities have arrested two people suspected of links to the alleged perpetrators of the terrorist attack in the Spanish city of Barcelona as police in Morocco and Spain continued to coordinate in the probe into the assault that shook the country last week.


The two suspects have been detained in the cities of Nador and Oujda in northeastern Morocco, amid reports that police are searching for a third suspect in Casablanca.


The man detained in the city of Nador is a 28-year-old with suspected ties to one of the members of

the cell of young Moroccans behind the Barcelona attack.


He was a resident of Ripoll, the small town in northeastern Spain where many members of the cell were living.


The second detainee, 34, lived for 12 years in Barcelona and is suspected of links to ISIS and of plotting to attack the Spanish embassy in Rabat.


Both suspects were arrested on Sunday.


On Monday Spanish police shot dead 22-year-old Moroccan Younes Abouyaaqoub, whom they had identified as the driver of the van that ploughed through crowds on Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona last Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring 120.


ISIS claimed responsibility for the van attack and a separate deadly assault, hours later, in the coastal resort of Cambrils, south of Barcelona.


Moroccan security forces have gone on alert since the attacks in Spain and Finland this month after Moroccan immigrants were involved in both assaults.


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