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By Trend

A police operation was underway Monday in an area west of Barcelona, and a Spanish newspaper reports that the fugitive in the city’s van attack has been captured, the Associated Press reported.

Regional police said officers shot a man wearing a possible explosives belt in Subirats, a small town 30 miles west of Barcelona.

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, has been the target of an international manhunt since Thursday’s van attack in Barcelona.

Authorities said Monday they now have evidence he drove the van that plowed down the city’s famed Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 pedestrians and injuring more than 120 others.

Abouyaaqoub then is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway, raising the death toll between the Barcelona attack and a related attack hours later to 15.

Another vehicle attack early Friday by other members of what Catalonia regional police have described as a 12-member extremist cell killed one person and wounded several others in the coastal town of Cambrils. That ended in a shootout with police, who killed five attackers.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both attacks.

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