Spanish police have confirmed there are fatalities after a van slammed into pedestrians in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district.
The newspaper El Pais quoted unnamed police sources as saying it was being treated as a terror attack and that the perpetrators of the crash were holed up in a bar in Tallers Street. There was no immediate police confirmation of the report.
Catalan police tweeted that people had died without specifying numbers. The Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper is reporting at least one dead and 20 injured.
A van jumped the sidewalk in the iconic part of Catalonia’s capital. At least five people were seen lying on the ground on the popular tourist street.
Children are escorted away from the scene on Thursday. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he was in contact with authorities after the van mowed people down. Rajoy said on Twitter the priority was to attend to the injured.
Las Ramblas, a street of stalls and shops that cuts through the center of Barcelona, is one of the city’s top tourist destinations. People walk down a wide, pedestrian path in the centre of the street, but cars can travel on either side.
While full details of the crash were not immediately clear, since July 2016 vehicles have been used to ram into crowds in a series of militant attacks across Europe, killing well over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm.
In recent weeks, threatening graffiti against tourists has appeared in Barcelona, which draws at least 11 million visitors a year.
In one video released under the slogan “Tourism kills neighbourhoods,” several hooded individuals stopped a tourist bus in Barcelona, slashed the tires and spray-painted the windscreen.
The deadliest recent attack in Spain was in March 2004, when Islamist militants placed bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800.
A police officer stands next to an ambulance after a van plowed into a crowd in Barcelona. (Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images)