Cambrils

French police investigating a suspected bomb factory near Paris believe three men arrested in connection with it were preparing attacks and had made calls to Syria, a minister said on Sept. 7. 

The UK is home to up to 25,000 Islamist extremists who could pose a threat, the EU’s top terror official has warned.

Officials have warned that the threat from home-grown jihadis who are prevented from joining Isis in Syria and Iraq is increasing, with the group inciting global terror attacks to maintain momentum.

A few weeks before Thursday’s attack in Barcelona, the Islamic State’s main online magazine posted an illustrated article with advice on acquiring a special kind of truck — specifically, the kind best suited for mowing down large numbers of pedestrians.

The imam believed to be the ringleader of the Spain attackers had links with the 2004 Madrid bombers and recently travelled to Belgium, it has emerged.

Investigators are piecing together the background of Isis supporters who launched two deadly attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils as the driver of the van used to kill 13 people remains at large.

Three people intentionally rammed a car into a group of people in the town of Assenois in Belgium’s southern Luxembourg province, leaving four injured, local media reported Sunday.

A 12-strong terror cell that carried out two attacks in Spain this week had collected 120 gas canisters and was planning to use them in vehicle attacks, Spanish police say, quoted by BBC. 

Canisters were found at a house said to be used by the cell that blew up in the town of Alcanar on Wednesday night.

Brief-stricken Spain and Finland paid homage on Aug. 20 to victims of terror assaults, as investigators turned their focus to Moroccan suspects in separate probes. 

The Catalonian terrorist cell, responsible for the twin attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, originally planned to carry out a major bombing campaign with explosive-laden vans. Antoni Gaudi's unfinished cathedral masterpiece was reportedly their main target.
Trends

Spain will maintain its security alert level at 4, one notch below the maximum level which would signal an attack was imminent, after two deadly attacks in the northeastern region of Catalonia this week, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said, cited by Reuters.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Cambrils, Spain, in an official communique.
It had already claimed the prior attack in Barcelona but put out an official statement later encompassing both atrocities, which police in Spain had been treating as linked.