Terror van kills at will in Spain - At least 12 die in Barcelona tourist zone attack

Panic-stricken children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona on Thursday. (AP)

New York Times News Service and Reuters, TT, Barcelona, Aug. 17: A driver crashed a van into pedestrians thronging a popular tourist area in the centre of Barcelona in Spain today, killing 12 people in an attack for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

At least 80 were wounded, Catalan officials said, and two people have been taken into custody.

Witnesses described people screaming and running for their lives as the driver of the van wove back and forth just before 6pm, apparently trying to hit as many people as he could. Police officers swept through the area near Las Ramblas, a wide boulevard with a large pedestrianised section, telling people to get out of the area.

"I heard a crowd screaming," Tom Markwell, a tourist from New Orleans, told the BBC after the attack, the latest in a series claimed by Islamist militants involving vehicles ploughing into crowds. "It sounded like they were screaming for a movie star."

Until Thursday, Spain had been spared from the recent wave of terrorist attacks in Europe, committed by extremists in France, Germany, Britain and elsewhere.

The country has, however, been a transit point for recruits of the militant group, both for those going to Syria and those returning.

The attack appeared to follow the playbook of recent assaults in which attackers drove vehicles into crowded stretches of large European cities and brought carnage. That modus operandi - crude, deadly and very hard to prevent - has killed well over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm.

In a statement issued by the Islamic State's news agency on the messaging app Telegram, and citing a "security source," the Islamic State's Amaq News Agency said that the "perpetrators of the attack in #Barcelona are soldiers of the Islamic State".

It added that the assailants had acted on the command of the group's caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in speeches has ordered supporters to carry out acts of terror in countries fighting the Islamic State.

After the attack, the police told people not to pass through the area near Plaza de Cataluña and Las Ramblas in the heart of the city, popular destinations for tourists.

Pro-Islamic State accounts on Telegram shared news of the attack. One channel, called "Expansion of the Caliphate", posted video of the scene of the violence alongside a message in Arabic. "Terror is filling the hearts of the Crusader in the Land of Andalusia," it said.

In the past year, the Islamic State has devoted resources to translating their channels and messages into Spanish.