The terrorists behind Thursday’s deadly rampages in Spain were part of a sophisticated cell that had been quietly plotting their attacks for months — and their body count would have been far higher if their plans hadn’t gone awry at the last minute, police revealed Friday.
Cops suspect the cell of 12 young jihadis had been scheming to stuff a van with butane tanks and then blow it up in Barcelona — until one of the canisters accidentally exploded at their house in Alcanar on Wednesday.
“The explosion in Alcanar meant they no longer had the necessary material to plan larger-scale attacks in Barcelona,” said Catalonia’s police chief Josep Lluis Trapero.
“They were probably looking for a different kind of attack.”
Without their explosives, the men were instead forced into a hasty Plan B — at least one of them plowed a white van into pedestrians in Barcelona’s bustling Las Ramblas, killing 13, before five of them pulled a similar stunt in Cambrils, killing one.
ISIS has taken responsibility for the attack, though it is not clear whether they were involved in the plot or merely inspired it.
Cops shot those five men dead at the scene — and police sources revealed Friday that one of them was the suspected driver in the Barcelona attack, 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir.
Four other suspects have also been arrested, including Moussa’s brother, Driss, whose name was used to rent the first van.
Alarmingly, law enforcement had no idea of the carnage being cooked up inside the cell’s Alcanar abode until the terror attacks Thursday.
Even when the house exploded the night before, cops believed it was just a drug factory that went kaboom, according to The Guardian.
But when police returned on Friday to comb through the rubble, they found more than 100 butane bottles alongside the remains of two people, according to radio station La Cadena Ser.
They also found traces of the explosive TATP — sometimes called “Mother of Satan” — which was also used by ISIS terrorists in the 2015 Paris attacks, the Brussels bombings last year and this year’s Manchester Arena bombing, the newspaper El Pais reports.
The house had been repossessed by a bank years ago, and the young men had been squatting there for more than a year without raising any eyebrows, the Guardian reports.
Neighbors saw them roaring around on Kawasaki motorbikes, but had no idea they were up to anything more sinister until the house blew up and human remains started raining down on their yards.
“We never spoke to them,” neighbors Patrick Vinaros told The Guardian. “They weren’t unfriendly, but they made a lot of noise with their motorbikes.”
But new details on Friday revealed some of the dark thoughts going through Moussa Oukabir’s mind.
“Kill the unbelievers and leave only Muslims who follow their religion,” he had written on the social-media site Kiwi when asked what he would do if he became the absolute world leader.
Asked in which country he would never consider living, he answered: “The Vatican.”
He also spent a month in custody in prison as a sexual-abuse suspect before being released in 2012, Catalonian government sources told The Telegraph.
Another look into the terrorists’ twisted minds came when footage emerged of one attacker smiling and taunting police before he was gunned down in Cambrils.
He gets up once after being shot and continues to gleefully goad the cops — before they put him down for good.
“It was like watching a horror film, particularly when he jumped back up after being shot and started laughing at the police,” Fitzroy Davies, who shot the footage, told the Express and Star.
“They were backing off and he was smiling at them as he charged towards them. He was behaving strangely, like he was on drugs, ranting and raving as he went up and down the street. Then they fired again and he fell down. This time he stayed down.”
One sharp-shooting Catalan cop ultimately gunned down four of the five terrorists, Trapero revealed Friday.
The officer, who was not named, was stationed at a checkpoint near where the attackers ran down three people in an Audi A3, according to the La Vanguardia newspaper.
Seeing the attackers leaving their car with knives and axes, the officer used his rifle to shoot four of them dead, the paper reports.
The fifth evaded the fire and managed to stab a pedestrian in the face before another cop took him out.
Alongside Moussa, police identified two of the other dead men as Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.
Three suspected members of the cell are still missing, including one identified by cops as Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, Trapero told local television.
All of the named men are Moroccan nationals but were living in Ripoll or nearby.
Moussa’s brother Driss also lives in the town, which is around 60 miles north of Barcelona.
He turned himself in to police there Thursday after media identified him as the person who rented the van, but denied any involvement in the terror attack, claiming his ID was stolen before it was used to rent the van.
A friend said Driss was in town at the time of the attack and that he was “very surprised” by his arrest.
“He was here when it happened I think, so I don’t think it was him,” Pablo Romeres told the Telegraph.
The town’s mayor said everyone there is in a state of shock.
“The police have been checking all the homes connected with the family. People here are just really surprised. Ripoll is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else,” Mayor Jordi Munell told The Guardian.
Meanwhile, as police scoured the country for all the terrorists Friday, the rest of the country paid tribute to their victims.
Crowds filled Las Ramblas to commemorate those killed there just a day earlier, and to send a message: “No tengo miedo” or “We are not afraid.”
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy addressed the defiant masses and declared three days of mourning.
“Unfortunately, Spaniards know the absurd and irrational pain that terrorism causes,” Rajoy said. “We have received blows like this in recent years, but we also know that terrorists can be
beaten.”
Some who escaped the killing spree on Thursday returned to the scene for the tribute.
“Yesterday all we could hear at this spot was the screaming and panic and the horrible cracking sounds as the van snaked through the crowds mowing people down and smashing souvenir kiosks,” Ken Morris, 61, told the Telegraph.
“Yet hours later the streets are just as packed with people showing they won’t let terror win. It’s amazing.”
Additional reporting by Yaron Steinbuch