Spain suspects were in France before attacks
MADRID — Some of the Spain terror suspects spent a night in France a week before the fatal attacks in and near Barcelona, French authorities said Wednesday as police in Spain revealed they found a real suicide bomb belt in the house where the attackers tried to make explosives.
An Audi A3 car that was observed in France on Aug. 11-Aug. 12 is the same one involved in the attack carried out in the seaside town of Cambrils in the early hours of Aug. 18, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said. A woman was killed there, and police fatally shot five suspects.
French investigators are working “very closely” with Spanish colleagues “to determine the precise reasons for this lightning trip…and if the terrorists were in contact with other people on (French) territory,” Molins said.
Separately, a French police official with knowledge of the investigation said several men who arrived in the Audi stayed at a hotel in the southern Paris suburb of Malakoff, visited a shopping centre and bought a camera before leaving. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name.