Thirteen dead as Van rams Barcelona crowd

BARCELONA: Thirteen people have been killed and more than fifty injured after a suspected terrorist crashed  into a crowd of people on a pavement in a popular tourist area of Barcelona. 

Officers in Spain´s second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar".

A local security source told AFP that at least two people had died in the van attack and around 20 were wounded.

The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects.

The famous Las Ramblas boulevard is one of Barcelona´s busiest streets, normally thronged with tourists and street performers until well into the night.

"Huge collision on Las Ramblas in Barcelona by an individual driving a van, many injuries," a police statement said.

The area around the incident was cordoned off, with several ambulances and police vehicles on the scene, an AFP correspondent said.

Vehicles have been used in several terror attacks in Europe in recent years, including a jihadist massacre that claimed 86 lives in the French Riviera city of Nice.

Spain had so far been spared the kind of extremist violence that rocked nearby France, Belgium and Germany.