A shocked British father has spoken about the moment he rushed to help a young boy who had been injured in the Barcelona terror attack.
Harry Athwal, from Birmingham, saw the child lying injured in the road immediately after a van was driven deliberately into crowds of pedestrians.
He said he ignored warnings from police in order to comfort the boy.
Harry Athwal, from Birmingham, was pictured comforting the child, who was injured when a van ploughed into crowds in Barcelona’s busy tourist district
Mr Athwal, 44, who was pictured comforting the child, told The Mirror: ‘The police were telling me to move but I would not leave him.
‘All the time I was thinking the terrorists could come back but I was not leaving that child. To me, he looked like my own son.’
Mr Athwal said the boy’s leg was bent the wrong way and he could not detect a pulse.
He was in a restaurant on a first floor balcony when a van, believed to have been driven by 22-year-old jihadist Younes Abouyaaqoub was driven into crowds of tourists.
Thirteen people were killed in the atrocity, with the youngest being just three years old.
More than 100 were injured as the rented Fiat van swerved from side-to-side, ploughing down pedestrians on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard.
Thirteen people were killed and more than 100 injured in Thursday’s attack in the heart of Barcelona’s tourist district
An arrest warrant has been issued for Abouyaaqoub, who was part of a terror cell which originally planned to fill a lorry with explosives before carrying out the attack in Barcelona.
Wanted: Police believe Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, was at the wheel of the van which killed 13 people and injured more than 100 in the heart of Barcelona’s tourist district on Thursday
A further two terrorists could also be on the loose, La Vanguardia reports, but this is unconfirmed.
Investigators first thought 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, who rented two vans linked to the atrocity using documents stolen from his older brother, had been at the wheel.
Oukabir, from the town of Ripoll, 60 miles north of Barcelona, was gunned down along with four other jihadists in the early hours of Friday morning at the coastal resort of Cambrils.
Also killed were Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were armed with knives and machetes and were wearing what appeared to be suicide belts. The identities of the other two dead jihadis have not been released.
Abouyaaqoub is now the prime suspect for police investigating who the driver was, El Pais reports, but his whereabouts is unknown. Spain’s government will decide today whether to raise the country’s terror threat level.
A handcuffed suspect was taken into custody in connection with the attacks in Ripoll today. A large crowd gathered and jeered as the man was led away. He has not been identified
One of the gang died in an explosion at an address in Alcanar, 120 miles south of Barcelona, shortly before midnight on Wednesday.
Canisters of explosive butane gas, as well as plastic explosive TATP – nicknamed Mother of Satan – were found at the home, which was destroyed in the blast.
Had the accidental explosion not happened, police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said, Thursday’s attack would have had an even ‘bigger scope’.
Catalan police believe there may have been a second fatality at the house, stating on Twitter: ‘We are working to determine if remains in Alcanar are a second corpse. We are working to determine if biological traces from Alcanar are human.’
Surveillance video from inside a Barcelona museum captured images of the van used in the fatal attack. The video shows a person with a stroller just barely getting out of the white van’s way and other people on the walkway scattering as it barreled down the walkway.
The footage was shot Thursday from a security camera inside the Erotic Museum of Barcelona on an upper floor that pointed toward a window with a view of the promenade.
Museum goers who apparently either heard the van or people outside just after it went by are seen in the images gathering near the window and looking outside.