First named victims of the Las Ramblas attack are Italian man Bruno Gulotta and Belgian woman Elke Vanbockrijck
Citizens from more than 30 countries have been injured or killed in the van attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona, and the coastal town of Cambrils, according to Catalan authorities.
By Friday morning, 14 people were confirmed dead and more than 100 injured. They come from at least 34 countries including France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Venezuela, Australia, Ireland, Peru, Algeria and China.
One of the first victims to be named was an Italian man, Bruno Gulotta, who was on holiday with his wife and two children, according to his colleagues at the online tech publication Tom’s Hardware. The company’s Facebook page said the staff were in mourning.
Pino Bruno, the head of the company, was quoted by the Italian news agency Ansa as saying Gulotta’s wife had told him the family were walking down Las Ramblas when the van appeared and Gulotta knelt down to successfully shield their son, six, and daughter, seven months.
Another victim was a 44-year-old Belgian woman, Elke Vanbockrijck. She was reported to have been in the city on holiday with her husband and two sons, aged 11 and 14.
Patrick Dewael, the mayor of Tongeren, where the family lived, sent his condolences and told Belgian radio that he had presided over the couple’s wedding in 2014.
According to El País, three Spanish citizens were killed, including Franciso López Rodríguez, 60, originally from Granada. He had been walking along Las Ramblas with his wife at the time of the attack. A Portuguese woman, aged 73 or 74, was also killed, the country’s main news agency reported.
The family of a seven-year-old Australian boy, who became separated from his mother during the attack, have said he is still missing.
Tony Cadman, of Sydney, posted on Facebook that his grandson Julian Cadman was missing and Julian’s mother, Jom, was in a serious but stable condition in hospital.
The death toll rose to 14 on Friday, after a woman injured in the Cambrils attack died of her injuries, Catalonia’s civil protection agency confirmed. The woman, who has not been named, is the first fatal victim of the attack in Cambrils, where a van was driven into pedestrians in the early hours of Friday, in a copy of the earlier atrocity.
The youngest victim of the attacks was thought to be a three-year-old girl, Spanish media reported. She died shortly after being taken to hospital. A six-year-old girl of unknown nationality was taken to hospital with a cerebral haemorrhage, an official at Vall d’Hebron University hospital told the New York Times.
The British Foreign Office said it had received no confirmed reports of British citizens injured or killed so far. A spokesperson said it was “assisting a small number of British people affected”.
Chris Pawley, 30, a survivor of the Manchester Arena bombing who was in the area when the attack occurred, told the Manchester Evening News he couldn’t believe he had been caught up in a second terrorism incident in under six months. He had just left the Ariana Grande concert in May when the bomb exploded.
Pawley said of Thursday’s attack: “There was police everywhere and ambulances, the shops started putting the shutters down. We have just come back to the hotel, as we were caught up in the arena attack – can’t believe it.”
France has confirmed that 26 of its citizens were injured, with 11 in a serious condition.
According to the German foreign ministry, 13 nationals were among those injured. Some of them were injured seriously and were still fighting for their lives, the spokesperson Martin Schäfer said.
He could neither confirm nor rule out earlier reports that three German citizens were among those killed.
German media is reporting that a group of three teenage girls from Oberhausen in North-Rhine Westphalia were among those injured in the attack. The two 17-year-olds and one 14-year-old had been on a day trip to Barcelona.
The Netherlands said three Dutch nationals had been injured, and a Greek diplomat reported three of its nationals had been wounded: a woman and her two children. China said two people from Taiwan were being treated for severe injuries, and confirmed that a person from Hong Kong had minor injuries. The US state department said it knew of one American with minor injuries.
Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said four Australians had been hurt – two women in a serious but stable condition, and two men who were “directly affected” and had gone back to their hotel to seek medical attention.
A 42-year-old man from California was missing after being separated from his wife in Las Ramblas, NBC news reported. Jared Tucker has not been seen since Thursday afternoon, shortly after he and his wife had a drink in a cafe. The couple had travelled to Europe to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
Throughout the night there were urgent appeals on social media for English, Italian and French translators to go to hospitals and clinics to help medical staff attending to dozens of non-Spanish speaking victims.
Ireland confirmed it was helping a family of four caught up in the attack. A man originally from the Philippines and resident in Ireland, who was on holiday with his wife and two children, was hit on his side but his injuries were not life-threatening, Emmanuel Fernandez, the consul general of the Philippines embassy in Madrid, told the Irish broadcaster RTÉ.
Many countries have set up emergency helplines for their citizens caught up in the violence, and their relatives..
Spanish police, meanwhile, swept through the narrow alleys branching off Las Ramblas, past deserted outdoor cafes, where half-eaten plates of tapas lay abandoned by fleeing diners.
Spanish authorities are yet to publish the names of the dead and injured. Foreign embassies are still scrambling to establish who has been affected. Many tourists are not believed to have registered their travel plans and movements.
Many parts of central Barcelona remained sealed off overnight, with people told to stay in their homes or hotels, and the metro and most transport routes shut down. Families and friends have been split up, with police evacuating people to different parts of the city, and mobile phone networks overwhelmed.
Catalan authorities urged those affected to stay off the phone networks and use social media to inform their loved ones they were OK.
