Spanish police have confirmed the identity of the driver suspected of killing 13 people in last week’s attack in Barcelona.
He is 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, officials said, and the manhunt has been extended across Europe.
Authorities earlier said they could not rule out the possibility that he had slipped across the border to France.
New CCTV footage from the day of the attack appears to show him fleeing the scene on foot. Three images in El Pais newspaper allegedly show the man walking through La Boqueria market, wearing sunglasses, as he passes other people heading away from Las Ramblas.
Police say they are investigating the possibility that, some 90 minutes later, the suspect stabbed and killed a Spanish man and stole his car.
Two hours after the attack, 34-year-old Pau Pérez, from Vila Franca, was found dead in the passenger seat of his vehicle. He is the 15th person confirmed dead following the two attacks.
Thirteen were killed when the van, allegedly driven by Moroccan-born Abouyaaqoub, swerved through crowds in the busy Las Ramblas in Barcelona on Thursday. One woman died during a second attack in Cambrils hours later, in which five suspected jihadists were killed by police.
On Sunday, Catalan police chief Josep Lluís Trapero said that of the 12 suspects, only one – assumed to be Abouyaaqoub – remained at large.
In addition to the five killed in Cambrils, four others are under arrest and there are two sets of human remains to be identified at a house that blew up the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona, last Wednesday night. Police believe it was being used as a bomb factory for far deadlier vehicle attacks.
French media report that the vehicle used in Cambrils had been caught on speed cameras in France’s Essonne region the previous week. But a direct link between the group of attackers in Spain and the car’s appearance in France has not yet been established.
It has now emerged that an imam living in the town of Ripoll, where Abouyaaqoub and several other suspects came from, is suspected of recruiting young people to an extremist cause.
Family members of the dead suspects said they believe Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty radicalised several young people from the town.
A picture is now emerging of Imam Satty as a possible ringleader or key organiser of the 12-strong terror cell. The imam apparently left the mosque in June for an extended trip to Morocco, but a flatmate said he had been seen in Ripoll as recently as last Tuesday.
The father of two of those shot dead by police in Cambrils, Mohamed and Omar Hychami, said he was devastated. Hecham Igasi also accused the imam of radicalising his sons.
El Mundo said that one of those killed in Cambrils, Said Aallaa, had left a note in his room apologising for the harm he was about to cause.
The search for Imam Satty has lost some urgency after police suggested he may have died in the explosion in Alcanar. The group had apparently been planning three co-ordinated attacks using home-made bombs. Police found about 120 gas canisters at the site.
Spanish media outlets say Imam Satty had spent some time in prison, and had met prisoners involved or linked with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which 191 people died. He also stayed in Belgium for some three months last year, where he had been searching for work, including in Vilvoorde, a small town of just 42,000 from which more than 20 jihadists departed for Syria in 2014.
The mayor of Vilvoorde, Hans Bonte, said the imam had spent time there between January and March 2016, and had been screened by police. But at the time, there did not appear to be a serious issue, he said.
So-called Islamic State (IS) said it had carried out the Las Ramblas and Cambrils attacks, though it is not clear whether any of the attackers were directly connected to the group or simply inspired by it.