Spanish authorities discover terrorists' plans to bomb Barcelona church

Spanish security forces have discovered an abandoned plan to blow up a church in Barcelona during a raid on the headquarters of terrorists believed to be responsible for the van attack in Las Ramblas on Thursday.

The terrorists planned on driving vans packed with explosives into three busy tourist areas in Barcelona, including the world-famous Sagrada Familia cathedral, according to Daily Mail, citing Spanish newspaper El Español.

El Español reported that the group had planned to explode one van in Las Ramblas, the second by the Sagrada Familia cathedral and the third in the port area of the city.

The terrorists had intended to set off the vans using acetone peroxide — a highly-combustible explosive material also known as "the Mother of Satan." However, the terrorists were forced to reconsider their plans after some of their butane-filled gas containers that were stored in a building in Alcanar accidentally detonated the night before they were supposed to carry out the attacks on Thursday.

"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," police spokesman Josep Lluis Trapero said at a press conference on Friday.

The authorities initially misconstrued the gas explosion as a domestic violence, but they later learned that the building was packed with butane canisters and over 20 drums of gas and TATP explosives.

Officials initially thought that only one person was killed in the explosion, but investigators are trying to determine whether the human remains found at the site on Friday were from a second victim. An unnamed police official said that investigators believe that a Moroccan imam named Abdelbaki Es Satty, might have been the second person killed in the explosion.

The authorities believe that the group that carried out the attack was radicalized by Es Satty. The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached said that he had not seen the imam since June when he said that he was returning to Morocco for three months.

At least 14 people were killed and over a hundred were injured after a van was driven into a crowd of tourists on the busy Las Ramblas street in Barcelona on Thursday.

In a separate attack eight hours later, a car rammed into people in a seaside resort in Cambrils, wounding six people.

The authorities have identified the main suspect in the Barcelona attack as 22-year-old Moroccan Younes Abouyaaquoub. On Monday, the police reported that Abouyaaqoub had been shot down in the town of Subirats, which is about an hour's drive west of Barcelona. The suspect was reportedly wearing a suicide vest that was later revealed to be fake.

"We confirm that the person killed in the incident of #Subirats is Younes Abouyaaqoub, author of the terrorist attack in #Barcelona," a tweet from the police stated.