18/08/2017 World News Today

Police in the Spanish region of Catalonia say the terror network

behind Thursday's deadly attacks was originally planning

Hundreds of flowers and candles now mark the spot where the biggest

Side by side for a minute's silence, Spain's King Felipe VI

Two people die and eight others are injured in a stabbing in Finland.

Police say it's not currently being treated as a terrorist incident.

And Steve Bannon - the man once described

as the President's brain - has been fired from his role

Hello and welcome to World News Today.

Police in the Spanish region of Catalonia say the jihadists

who killed 14 people in two vehicle attacks had been planning

a much bigger atrocity involving explosives.

The Chief of Police said their plot appeared to have been disrupted

by the explosion of a bomb factory in the town

of Alcanar on Wednesday, leading them to adopt more

13 people were killed and scores wounded yesterday afternoon

when a van was driven into crowds on Las Ramblas in the

centre of Barcelona - a popular tourist site.

During the night, five suspected terrorists were shot dead

in the coastal town of Cambrils after they drove a car into people,

So far, four people have been arrested in

Across another European city touched by terror,

one minute of stillness filled the space that words could not.

A void with a single burning question, why?

Then, as King Felipe and the Prime Minister looked on,

But the previous 24 hours of violence were shocking.

This, a street in the coastal town of Cambrils.

A terror suspect is cornered and is wearing what police

They decide there is only one course of action.

The dead man was one of five who tried to mow

All of the attackers were shot by police and investigators now

believe they were part of a terrorist cell

of eight to 12 people, some of whom were in this house,

120 miles from Barcelona the night before, when a blast killed one

It is thought explosive devices were being prepared,

as well as the blueprint for Barcelona's Las Ramblas attack.

Nick and Stephanie from Lincoln were caught up in the panic.

A white van ploughed into the path of hundreds of people.

They run for cover into a nearby cafe.

The only thing going through my head was Paris, and the London attacks,

where the attackers would come through restaurants and bars,

I thought, we are going to get shot, we are going to get shot.

When we turned around, after the first bang,

bodies everywhere, kids everywhere, people shouting.

I can't seem to shift that from my mind at all.

It is absolutely heartbreaking, what people have gone through here.

You don't understand what is happening.

And then you see the people on the floor, you realise

Police have released this image of four suspects.

A young Moroccan man, Moussa Oukabir, three others.

His older brother was arrested and then released yesterday.

More information is coming out about the victims,

like Bruno Gulotta, 35 and from Rome, on holiday

with his wife and two children, a little boy

There are concerns for Julian Cadman, who is seven

and thought to have dual Australian and British nationality.

He has not been seen since the attack.

24 hours after the blood-letting, this is Las Ramblas,

where, a few hours ago, bodies lay, now there are flowers.

On the boulevard where the white van eventually crashed,

So many have told us that life must go on,

But lives have been changed here for ever.

Let's speak to the BBC's Ben Brown, who's in Barcelona.

Then, we are seeing how life is continuing. Las Ramblas is now a

shrine. Where are we in the investigation now? Yes, people are

back on the streets 24 hours after that attack on Las Ramblas, but a

few minutes ago Google were again and running in terror, there was

some kind of fight a few hundred yards from our location. That was

enough to get people running in panic once more and it is quite an

Aidy and tense atmosphere, although people wanting to show they are

prepared to come back out onto the streets and defy terrorism. Where we

are in this the destination is that police have arrested four men but

they are looking for more, those men that you saw and that report,

including Moussa Oukabir who is believed to have been the driver of

the van that caused so much death and destruction in Las Ramblas.

According to some reports, he then went to this other town south-west

of hair, Cambrils and that is where he was one of five terror suspects

shot dead there. That has not been confirmed but there are persistent

reports in the Spanish media that he was one of the five terror suspects

killed there as well. What seems to now be the case and this is what the

Catalan police are telling us is that they do believe there was a

much more deadly atrocity that was being planned by this wider terror

network. They had a lot of gas canisters at this house south of

here. They somehow blocked on Wednesday night at the house where

they were stored and that changed the plans of the terrorist because

after that they could not carry out wit Wardle bomb attack they were

planning and they decided in the words of the police to carry out a

much more rudimentary attack using vehicles. So here in Barcelona and a

few hours later in the early hours of the morning down about the course

hundred kilometres from here. The total death toll from that is 14

with more than 130 people injured. And we are hearing more details

about the people that lost their lives. Yes, and from many different

countries, the injured we are hearing are from some 34 different

countries. The dead are from countries like the United States,

Italy, Belgium and so on. Barcelona is a city that attracts people, of

course, from all over the world, it is one of the most beautiful cities

in the world, not surprising, but Las Ramblas, when that van drove at

high speed for some half a kilometre along there, swerving into

pedestrians, Las Ramblas was absolutely packed with people from

many different countries, tourists, holiday-makers, sightseers. This is

one of the main tourist attractions in Barcelona, it is what people come

to see, the promenade along the Las Ramblas. So that is queried what the

terrorists had in mind, they wanted to kill people not only from

Barcelona but for killing people from many different countries as

well and they had succeeded in doing that. But the police believe that

perhaps a much more deadly atrocity may have been prevented just by the

fact that those gas canisters blew up on Wednesday night. Then, a

sobering note on which to end. Thank you. Ben Brown, speaking live from

Barcelona. We will be speaking to an expert on terrorism later on, do

stay with us for that. Police in Finland say two people

have been killed and at least seven others injured in a stabbing attack

in the south-western city of Turku. A young man has been

arrested - he is thought The authorities say

they are reinforcing security at border crossings

and across the country. European Commission President

Jean-Claude Juncker has since issued a statement saying,

"We strongly condemn this unprovoked attack which comes only 24 hours

after the horror that My thoughts are with the victims

and their loved ones." On the line is Wali Hashi,

a journalist from Finland. I know that you were very quickly

after the attacks took place, you were quickly on the scene, tell us

what you saw. Thank you very much. I was at the bank and I just saw

people running, I do not hold a reason, but when I came out I saw

that they were shouting. A few seconds later I saw that two ladies

were stabbed in front of the bank and I ran into another building. I

try to help one of the woman but at the same time, tried to call the

police and emergency services. It was a terrible situation at that

time. This was one of the people who had been attacked? Yes. We try to

concentrate on the lady, tried to save her life if we could and at the

same time called the police and the ambulance. For about ten minutes

after that, the ambulance came down and tried to save and taken to

hospital. It was a very bad situation, especially for this lady

because she was stabbed in the neck and I would be surprised if she

survived. I know that you then went to the press conference that the

authorities give, what points of information do you think stood up

from what they said? Not so much. We're talking about a country that

has been very peaceful for some time, one of the best locations in

the world, if you like for that. It is a civilised country, the man.

People were shocked that this happened in this country. We have

seen their televisions in Barcelona, France and London, but we thought we

would be different because we are not a colonised country and so on.

But when I saw the press conference and the police, the first thing you

can see is that everything is about the beginning, they do not want to

give anything away. They do not want to tell you that this is terrorism,

the only thing we got from them is that we try to find out how many

people were injured or died. Two people died and seven were injured

in Turku today. Everything is about trying to find out what was the

motivation, who was this guy, and why he did what he has done. We do

not know if it is linked to Barcelona, those questions have not

been answered at this conference. Thank you very much for sharing your

experience and thank you for telling us about what you saw arriving on

the scene shortly after those attacks. The journalist from

Finland, telling us about those attacks.

President Trump's controversial chief strategist

The embattled White House chief strategist who helped the President

win the 2016 election is the latest to get the push.

Let's go straight to our correspondent Gary O'Donoghue

This is Gary, there was a lot of discrepancy about whether he

resigned, whether he was pushed, we do now know that he was actually

getting a little help to me. Yes, he was fired, no question about that.

He was going to be fired a few weeks ago for various reasons and they

held. But the new chief of staff inside the White House, General John

Kelly, clearly had enough of Steve Bannon, who had gone off and done a

bunch of unauthorised interviews recently. The latest one, really

countering the White House message on things like North Korea. He

described North Korea as a sideshow, not something the White House once

said Atol in public because he did not -- because he does not believe

it. But also because of some friction he was said to be causing

between himself and the national security adviser HR McMaster who was

also falling out with people like Jared Kushner, the President's

son-in-law on policy issues as well. So he has gone. He was a hugely

influential figure for the president in many ways, a sort of ideological

base from where the present in many ways won has election victory. --

for the President. Donald Trump had been distancing himself from Steve

Bannon, telling everyone he had his own strategists, but he has set up

the Breitbart right-wing website and it has a voice that is still out

there, many of those, has poorer nonurban white reporters who did

vote for Donald Trump will not be happy about Steve Bannon's

departure. There was a very interesting to read from the editor

of Breitbart in the last few minutes. One single word with one

hashtag, war. We saw the president criticised for taking a long time to

react to the rallies in Charlottesville, was that making

Steve Bannon's position untenable or was it simply the fact that he was

not fitting in as well any more and he was simply taking too much

limelight away from the President? I think the latter name but also in

this particular week, with the Charlottesville problem, and the

President being accused of any since drawing a moral equivalence between

neo- Nazis and those who, to protest against getting rid of Steve Bannon

may help send that message that he really is not ambivalent about

right-wing supporters or the far right in America, so I think it will

be helpful in that sense, although, to be fair, it is not really Steve

Bannon that has done the damage to Donald Trump this week, it is Donald

Trump that has done the damage to Donald Trump this week. But it may

help to allay some of that criticism, I think. But, you know,

you must remember that the Donald Trump victory was based on a lot of

ideology that Steve Bannon proposes, economic nationalism, as it is

called, making America great again and bringing manufacturing and jobs

back to this country. So I would be surprised if you saw a radical,

ideological switch on the approach of Donald Trump from there won't

even though he has got rid of his chief strategist. OK, Gary, we will

leave it there for the time being. I am sure we will get more reaction on

this. Thank you very much. Let's take a look at some of

the other stories making the news... The South African Government has

denied media reports that it's planning to grant diplomatic

immunity to the Grace Mugabe is accused

of beating a 20-year-old model in a hotel room,

near Johannesburg, Police expected Mrs Mugabe to turn

herself in on Tuesday, Firefighters are struggling

to control two major blazes in central Portugal that have cut

off a village of 2,000 people. The fires broke out on Tuesday

evening and have so far left 92 people injured,

seven of them seriously. Let's go back to our top story -

Barcelona is the latest European city to suffer an attack

where vehicles have been used For authorities, such attacks

are extremely difficult to prevent and many have been wondering

what more - if anything - Let's speak to Colin Clarke

who is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation -

a US think-tank - where his research focuses on terrorism,

insurgency and criminal networks. He joins me via webcam

from Pittsburgh. Thank you for joining us live from

Pittsburgh. In terms of where this group was plotting all of this, we

are talking about Barcelona, south from Barcelona, were you aware that

this was such a hot for this of activity? Indeed, this has long been

known to be a Hot Spot of radical Islamic activity, in fact, the

leading terrorist in the 911 attacks met with an Al-Qaeda operative beer

prior to 9/11 just a couple of years ago in 2015. We saw a number of

businesses, butchers, phone call centres that were cracked down upon

and investigated for financing terrorism and sending money from

Spain to the Middle East and it has been documented that Spain has over

120 citizens that were known to travel to Iraq and Syria to fight

with ISAs and other Jihadi groups as foreign fighters. So quite a bit

that is there. Quite a bit of activity. In terms of this

particular group, do you think that it was being controlled by so-called

Islamic State or was it just motivated by it, how does that work?

That is a great question, unfortunately it is too early to

tell the forensics, with what happened, poor that this was a group

of individuals that had consumed large quantities of Isis propaganda

or decided to act on their own or whether there was a virtual planning

going on were Isis chiefs were communicating from Iraq and Syria

through encrypted duplications with these men in Spain and talking to

them about the tactics of such an attack. I would tell you that the

levels of sophistication of this attack, although the house blew up

on Wednesday night and Alcanar and the other vehicle attack was foiled,

there was some sophistication to this attack, so that this hint that

potentially Isis could have added more direct role. You talk about

Alcanar and it could have been so much couldn't it? If that house had

not exploded, the potential to do damage could have been an awful lot

worse, what do you make of that? Absolutely, what do I make of it?

Once again, they were saved by the ineptitude of the Terrace partly. We

talk about the capabilities of law enforcement but often we are saved

by inept terrorists. Unfortunately, they were not totally inept, they

were able to take vehicles and drive them into people but again, that

does not take a lot of skill, it is a very crude, basic attack and

unfortunately, it is a trend and we have seen that across Europe, in

East Berlin and London and the use of the vehicle is very troubling

because it is so easy to attack soft targets. Colin Clarke from the Rand

Corporation, thank you for sharing your expertise in terrorism with us.

More than 460 people are now confirmed to have died

in the landslide and flooding that hit Sierra Leone's capital Freetown,

Around 600 are still missing and the UK has pledged nearly

The BBC's Martin Patience reports from Freetown.

A simple wooden coffin for a victim with no name.

More than 200 graves were freshly dug for a mass burial of those

The bodies are being brought from the main mortuary in Freetown

This cemetery was last used during the Ebola outbreak,

and it gives you some sense of the scale of this problem

and how the authorities have been overwhelmed.

The country's president is calling for national unity.

This is another painful episode in our nation's history.

Hundreds of our unsuspecting compatriots were swept

At a distribution centre, tempers are fraying.

Getting your hands on clean water is a struggle.

Families are now sheltering in half built houses.

There is no comfort here, just grief.

This woman lost both parents and now she doesn't know how she'll

"We need help, the government needs to support us," she said.

"We need housing, we need help to start up our businesses again."

This young girl flicks through pictures of family.

But she may be too young to ever remember them.

In the US, millions of people will get their first chance to see

a total solar eclipse with their own eyes,

but for one couple in Missouri it will be a familiar sight.

They've travelled the world chasing eclipses for 26 years,

but on Monday, the celestial event will come right to their backyard.

We caught up with them to hear why this eclipse will be so special.

Nothing is like a total solar eclipse.

Well, I'm not a mystic at all, but it does have a kind

My name is Sharon Hahs and I've been married to Billy Hahs for 48 years

and I think we like to call ourselves eclipse aficionados.

We have loved chasing solar eclipses around the globe for about 26 years.

So these are the photos that we captured in Thailand.

We have been to 14 and we have seen and experienced 11 because...

We were rained out in Costa Rica, we were snowed out in Mongolia

And, of course, next is Missouri, USA.

Even though this was the third eclipse, this was the first time

we noticed that the sky was actually not black.

If you want to get in touch with us here at BBC World News,

Thank you for watching World News Today.

Many of us saw some heavy, thundery downpours today.

Tomorrow, on the face of it, is still a showery day