Armed police outside the town of Subirats. Emilio Morenatti AP / PA Images Emilio Morenatti AP / PA Images / PA Images

Updated 7.15pm

POLICE IN THE Catalan region of Spain have confirmed they shot and killed the main suspect accused of killing 13 people in the Barcelona terror attack this afternoon.

Local police have named the man as Younes Abouyaaqoub, the 22-year-old Moroccan who allegedly ploughed his van into crowds in Barcelona.

Police attended an incident in the town of Subirats, 45km west of Barcelona this afternoon, where Abouyaaqoud was suspected to be wearing an explosive belt. It was here he was shot dead.

Regional police chief Josep Luis Trapero said the bomb belt that he flashed turned out to be fake, but that he was carrying a bag of knives that police are analysing.

Trapero said officers were alerted by a caller who spotted a suspicious person near the local train station and then by a woman who reported she was certain she had seen Abouyaaqoub.

Roser Ventura, who works at a nearby vineyard, told AFP she saw around 20 police cars drive by with sirens wailing while helicopters rattled overhead, as she heard the news about the shot man on the radio.

Arnau Gomez, who lives about a kilometre away from where the suspect was shot, described the village of 300 people as being an ideal hideout as “it is far from everything”.

“In the hills there are many homes of seasonal workers, it’s easy to hide,” he told AFP.

On Friday morning, other members of a terror cell he belonged to drove their car into pedestrians in the seaside town of Cambrils, with one of them stabbing a woman who later died.

All five occupants of the car were shot dead by police, with other members of the 12-man terror cell that organised the attacks detained or believed dead.

Abouyaaqoub was the only one still at large.

With reporting from Hayley Halpin and AFP - © – AFP 2017 

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