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Spain Under Attack!! – It’s Time To Light Candles And Hold Hands … Again



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Aug 18 2017
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Quick, get some candles, prepare to hold hands and pretend the world is still safe from terror attacks. If you wish, Donald Trump is there as a punching bag, never mind the U.S. president has been foaming at the mouth telling all and sundry that the real bad people were the radical Islamic terrorists, not the Russians or even the Chinese.

 

Two months ago, the CIA warned Spanish authorities that Barcelona was a potential terrorist target. In fact, they had even zoomed in to Las Ramblas. However, Spain still couldn’t prevent the attack, which killed at least 13 people and injured more than 100 people on Thursday. That occurred despite a huge explosion at a house in the town of Alcanar (120 miles south of Barcelona) a day earlier (Wednesday).

 

In what appeared to be Plan-A went horribly wrong, the house was a terror cell used to make a bomb but went off pre-maturely. Spanish police now believe that butane gas cylinders were to have been packed into the hired transit van and used to cause even greater bloodshed on the packed Ramblas. The terrorists were forced to fall back on Plan-B – used the van itself as their weapon.

Bomb Went Off Pre-Maturely - Explosion in Alcanar, Spain

Had the terrorists succeeded in arming the hired Fiat van with butane gas cylinders, the deaths along Las Ramblas, a street popular with tourists, could be in the region of hundreds, not 13. Still, the reality that terror attack has returned to the streets of Europe means the influence of Islamic State (ISIL, ISIS, Daesh) is still alive and kicking.

 

The white van jumped onto a promenade and sped to around 80-km/h through a pedestrian zone on Las Ramblas of Barcelona, the famous main pedestrian walk way that crosses the city. The van swerved from side to side as it mowed down tourists and locals. Police also found a second van, believed to be a getaway vehicle.

 

The ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq has said that “soldiers” of the brainwashed death cult carried out the attack. Police said they had killed 5 alleged terrorists in the coastal town of Cambrils, whom were linked to Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona as well as Wednesday’s gas explosion in the municipality of Alcanar.

ISIS Called For Truck Attacks Just 10 Days Before Las Ramblas

Driss Oukabir – Rented Fiat Van But Claimed Innocence

The van involved in the deadly Las Ramblas attack was reportedly rented by a man named as Driss Oukabir, a Spanish national of North African descent. However, 28-year-old Mr. Oukabir was reportedly surrendered himself to the police and claimed that his documentation had been stolen, probably by his own brother Moussa Oukabir, and insisted he had no part in the deadly attack.

 

Spanish authorities have arrested 2 men – including Driss Oukabir and a Moroccan – but neither detainee is the suspected driver of the van, who reportedly escaped on foot. It was still not clear how many attackers had been involved. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced 3 days of official mourning for what he called a “jihadist attack.”

 

This was the 8th terror attack using a vehicle in Europe in the past 3 years, following the Nice assault in July 2016 that killed 86 and attacks on Westminster Bridge and London Bridge earlier this year that left 8 people dead. Spain has not been hit by a serious terrorist incident since 2004, when ISIS militants placed bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800.

Spain Barcelona Las Ramblas Under Terror Attack - Map

Interestingly, the region of Catalonia, from where the house in Alcanar was flattened by the explosive butane gas cylinders, has the highest concentration of radicalised Islamists in the country, along with Madrid and the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla in northern Morocco. More than 190 “jihadist terrorists” have been arrested since 2015.

 

On Thursday, the European Commission-created Radicalisation Awareness Network revealed and warned that between 1,200 and 3,000 Europeans who lived with and fought for IS in Iraq and Syria could return home. While the Barcelona attack closely resembled other so-called low-tech attacks using cars or trucks across Europe in the past year, there’s something scarier about this attack.

 

It appears that the radicalized Islamic terrorists are no longer satisfied with attacks using cars or trucks. They have graduated to arming the vehicle with explosive devices such as butane gas cylinders so that they could kill as many people as possible. And it doesn’t help the situation that such attack was carried out by “home-grown” Islamist radicals.

Spain Barcelona Las Ramblas Under Terror Attack - Woman Helping Casualties

Spain Barcelona Las Ramblas Under Terror Attack - People Helping Casualties

Spain used to be ruled by Muslim conquerors – known as the Moors – for almost 800 years (from 711 until 1492). A century after the Moorish Kingdom of Granada surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, in what is known as the Christian Reconquest, King Philip III decreed the expulsion of Muslims from Granada, a city in southern Spain’s Andalusia region.

 

The Moriscos – Moors who decided to convert to Catholicism after the Reconquest rather than leave Spain – were suspected of pretending being Catholics but continued to practice Islam in secret. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish monarchy forced an estimated 350,000 Moriscos to leave Spain for Muslim North Africa.

 

Today, at least 5-million descendants of the Moriscos expelled from Spain are living in Morocco alone, with millions more living in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia and Turkey. As of 2016, Spain officially had 1,919,141 Muslims out of a total population of 46,438,422 – about 4%. Out of these, 1,115,124 (or 58.7%) were immigrants without Spanish citizenship.

Spain Barcelona Las Ramblas Under Terror Attack - Woman On The Phone Crying

Some modern-day radical Islamist groups have tried to restore the caliphate to its former glory – through violence or terror attacks. Like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State or ISIS has ambitions of re-establishing the glory of former Islamic empires and spreading its influence across the globe. Apparently, the various terrorist organizations today still could not accept the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

 

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, much of the territory it controlled in the Middle East was partitioned by Western powers like Great Britain and France. Thereafter, the terror groups, under the pretext of restoring caliphates, see themselves as the next Ottoman Empire. Heck, even Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan believes he should be the Sultan of the new Ottoman Empire.

 

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