BARCELONA:
Barcelona was on alert yesterday after the US State Department warned of the
risk of a terrorist attack in Spain's second-largest city during the Christmas
holidays. "Exercise heightened caution around areas of vehicle movement,
including buses, in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona during Christmas and New
Year's. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist
locations, transportation hubs, and other public areas," the State
Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs said in a tweet on Sunday.

Asked about the
warning during an interview with Rac1 radio on Monday, Catalonia's regional
interior minister Miquel Buch said police "were working on this
threat". "We take seriously all threats, all of them are
investigated," he added, without giving further details.

Top-selling
Spanish newspaper El Pais, citing anonymous police sources, said the
authorities were looking for a 30-year-old Moroccan man with a licence to drive
buses. Barcelona-based daily El Periodico de Catalunya said Catalan regional
police had circulated an internal note that the man could try to drive a bus
into crowds in Barcelona. Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for the regional police
force in Catalonia did not confirm police were seeking a Moroccan man but said
a "temporary reinforcement of security measures in areas of high
concentration of people" was in place.

Spain has kept
its terrorist alert unchanged at the second-highest level despite the US State
Department warning, although security measures were boosted in December for the
Christmas holiday period, a Spanish interior ministry spokesman said. On August
17, 2017 a van rammed into crowds on Barcelona's tree-lined Las Ramblas
boulevard, killing 14 people.

The 22-year-old
Moroccan driver then stole a car after killing the driver and fled. Several
hours later five of his accomplices mowed down pedestrians on the promenade of
the seaside resort of Cambrils south of Barcelona before stabbing a woman to
death. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, Spain's
deadliest in over a decade. - AFP