Spanish police close in 'on suspect related to attacks' in Barcelona and Cambrils

Police in Catalonia said today they were closing in on a suspect in the twin terror attacks which killed 14 people, as a large security operation was launched around the town of Ripoll where the cell was formed. 

"We are close to a person related to the attack," the Mossos d'Esquadra said, adding security forces were deployed around the province of Girona, where Ripoll is located, and in particular in the area along the French border.

They would not confirm the level of the suspect's involvement in the attack. But there was speculation that the police might be closing the net on Younes Ayoubaaqoub, the last remaining named fugitive, who is suspected to have driven the van that attacked Barcelona's Ramblas on Thursday afternoon.

Police are also searching for a local imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty who left his post in Ripoll’s mosque in June and is suspected to have directed the cell.

Overnight on Friday his home in Ripoll was raided by officers searching for, amongst other evidence, DNA samples to test against at least two bodies found in a suspected bomb factory in the town of Alcanar.

Investigators are still probing the cell’s connection to Alcanar, 200 miles to the south, where, on the night before the attacks, a massive blast devoured a building at first suspected to be a drugs lab.

Police now believe that the cell was preparing explosives for an even more devastating attack in Barcelona, but changed their plans after much of their stockpile was destroyed.

Security sources cited by some Spanish media claimed they may have planned to target the Sagrada Familia, the iconic Barcelona cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi.

It was there that mourners today descended in their thousands for a special mass for the victims of the attacks, attended by Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, King Felipe and Queen Letizia and the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont. 

There was still no word on the fate of Julian Cadman, a British-Australian 7-year-old whose mother was injured in the attack and whose father arrived in Barcelona last night.

More details meanwhile continued to emerge on the Ripoll imam’s apparent terror links.

Es Satty spent two years in prison in Castellon in 2012 for trafficking hashish from Morocco,  incarcerated with Rachid Aglif, alias The Rabbit, who was serving a sentence for his role in the 2005 Madrid bombings, according to El Mundo.

His name also reportedly turned up in Operation Jackal, which netted five Islamists in 2006 for recruiting young men around the seaside town of Villanova i Geltru to go to Iraq. Villanova i Geltru and Cambrils both sit in a coastal strip south of Barcelona which has become known as a jihadist hotspot.

9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta is known to have met a senior al-Qaeda figure in Salou,  just a few miles from the site of Thursday night's attack in Cambrils.