Police confirm 1 dead and 32 injured after van hits crowd in act of terror

Barcelona police have confirmed a terrorist attack has taken place in the city centre, after a van drove into a crowd of pedestrians in the central Las Ramblas area.
Two armed men are reportedly holed up in a nearby restaurant following the incident.
The men – who may be not be those who drove a van into a huge crowd of people earlier – may be holding hostages inside the restaurant.
Police have said they are still searching for the man who was driving the van, which drove into one of the busiest squares in the city centre.
Authorities say a van mounted a pavement and struck several people in a “massive crash” in the area of the city that is popular with tourists.
A van has ploughed into crowds in the heart of Barcelona and Spanish media report at least 13 people have been killed in what police are treating as a terrorist attack.
The death toll was reported by Cadena Ser radio, citing police sources. Police said some people were dead and injured but did not confirm the number of casualties. They said were searching for the driver of the van.
Spanish newspaper El Periodico said two armed men were holed up in a bar in Barcelona’s city centre, and reported gunfire in the area, although it did not cite the source of the information.
It was not immediately clear whether the incidents were connected.
A source familiar with the initial US government assessment said Thursday’s incident appeared to be terrorism, and a White House spokeswoman said President Donald Trump was being kept abreast of the situation.
Media reports said the van had zigzagged at speed down the famous Las Ramblas avenue, a magnet for tourists.
“I heard screams and a bit of a crash and then I just saw the crowd parting and this van going full pelt down the middle of the Ramblas and I immediately knew that it was a terrorist attack or something like that,” eyewitness Tom Gueller told the BBC.
“It wasn’t slowing down at all. It was just going straight through the middle of the crowds in the middle of the Ramblas.”
Mobile phone footage posted on Twitter showed several bodies strewn along the Ramblas, some motionless. Paramedics and bystanders bent over them, treating them and trying to comfort those still conscious.
Around them, the boulevard was deserted, covered in rubbish and abandoned objects including hats, bags and a pram.
“We saw a white van collide with people. We saw people going flying because of the collision, we also saw three cyclists go flying,” Ellen Vercamm, on holiday in Barcelona, told El Pais newspaper.
El Pais said the driver of the vehicle had fled on foot.
Emergency services said people should not go to the area around Barcelona’s Placa Catalunya, one of the city’s main squares at the top of the Ramblas, and requested the closure of nearby train and metro stations.
Witness Ethan Spibey told Britain’s Sky News: “All of sudden it was real chaos. People just started running screaming, there were loud bangs. People just started running into shops, there was a kind of mini-stampede where we were, down one of the alleyways.”
He said he had taken refuge with dozens of other people in a nearby church.
“They’ve locked the doors because I’m not sure whether the person who may have done it has actually been caught, so they’ve locked the doors and told people just to wait in here.”
In recent weeks, threatening graffiti against tourists has appeared in Barcelona. In one video released under the slogan “tourism kills neighbourhoods”, several hooded individuals stopped a tourist bus in Barcelona, slashed the tyres and spray-painted the windscreen.