[John Vause, Cnn Anchor:] Hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause.
[Isha Sesay, Cnn Anchor:] And I'm Isha Sesay. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. We begin with a second possible terror attack in Spain. We just got new video from the coastal town of Cambrils, Spain where five suspected terrorists were killed by police.
[Vause:] The video was taken inside a nightclub when something happened. There is the clear sound of what seemed to be gunfire. There's still no official word of exactly what went on there. Another video appears to show what happened next. And a warning this video you're about to see is graphic.
[Sesay:] Well, as we put that video up on the screen, you see what looks to be bodies at the scene that you see there lying there on the ground. They could be dead. Police say four terror suspects were killed and a fifth died later of his wounds. Well, the possible terror attack in Cambrils came just hours after the initial terror attack in Barcelona. That's where a speeding van mowed down crowds on the city's popular Las Ramblas Avenue.
[Vause:] CNN's Melissa Bell joins us now from the scene. But Melissa let's get back to Cambrils and what more doe we know about that counter-terrorism raid and in particular what may have been the presence there of explosive suicide belts.
[Melissa Bell, Cnn Correspondent:] That's right. There is this idea police are investigating the possibility that these terrorists the five alleged terrorists that we now know to have died in that incident in Cambrils whether they were wearing any explosive belts at all. And of course, we also know from authorities that they believe that the event in Cambrils are linked also to those, of course, here in Barcelona where at 5:00 p.m. last night, John, that truck plowed down that Las Ramblas that road, pedestrianized central part of that road just behind me mowing down those very many tourists and locals who will have been ambling around in the evening killing, as you know, 13 of them. Of course, even as this investigation continues, we wait to find out whether that death toll rises or not since so many of the wounded remain in hospital, many of them seriously wounded.
[Sesay:] All right. Melissa we appreciate that. Thank you for the update. We'll come back to you a little bit later on the show to get more details thank you.
[Vause:] Ok. Las Ramblas Avenue was packed with shoppers, tourists and street performers when the van came at them at high speed.
[Sesay:] Witnesses describe the surreal moment when a largely summer day suddenly turned tragic.
[Unidentified Male:] I was just about to go on to the La Ramblas which obviously is the most one of the most popular tourist streets in Barcelona. And I came through a cross walk and the light turned red just as I was about to cross. And so I stopped. And all of a sudden, a white van started speeding out of nowhere and took a drastic right turn, right on to the walking part of the Las Ramblas street and right into the people that were standing on the opposite side of the cross walk that I was at. And he just plowed him down with his van and pretended to drive down the Las Ramblas. I heard a very loud kind of like it sounded like, you know, the guy that was driving whoever was driving the van kind of floored it. And I see this white van come. It looks like a utility truck or something, white van with some blue writing on the side. And it literally came straight down Ramblas and ran into people, you know, on every side. The Ramblas is full of, you know, pedestrians, street merchants, street performers and I saw people flying into the air.
[Unidentified Female:] All of a sudden there was tidal wave of people running toward us and they were hysterical. It wasn't just a small number; it was a large number of people. Children were screaming. There was clearly a lot of distress. In Spain, English is not widely spoken and it was very difficult to work except that you could see the fear and the distress on these people and the fact that they were screaming in terror. You know, regardless of what might have happened, we knew we had to get ourselves out of there. It was kind of like a little chain events where I just saw a few people turn around and started yelling and screaming. And then almost instantly everyone around them was just yelling, screaming and heading in the opposite direction. And in that moment, me and my cousin just turned around and started running back the way that we had initially come from. And all you could hear was just people scream and just so much chaos and everyone just screaming and yelling, trying to find their other family members just because that area itself and that market was so extremely packed. Everyone was just trying to run to safety
[Vause:] Joining us now CNN law enforcement contributor and former FBI special agent Steve Moore and Bobby Chacon also a former FBI special agent. Ok, Steve joint the dots here for us starting with this recent counter terror raid in Cambrils. Police say they stopped a second terror attack. The assumption is that there is a connection between what happened in Cambrils and the terror attack in Barcelona. But they're not offering a lot more details. So what would that what are the possibilities here? What could that connection be?
[Steve Moore, Cnn Law Enforcement Contributor:] What happens is after the first attack, you're going to roll out and pick up on any friends, any social media acquaintances anything, anybody that these people who you captured have talked to. You're going to immediately try to develop any leads on possible future attacks. And when you go out on those things, when you jump out to put all your resources on these attacks, you can hit a dry hole. These guys, from the looks of it, hit gold the first time. If these people were actually involved, then you've got an extremely quick, extremely effective investigation.
[Vause:] What you're saying is this sort of part of a bigger, wider plan for [inaudible] terror
[Moore:] Oh, absolutely. That's the ticking clock here because anybody you don't capture has no motivation to be captured. They're not going to sit around.
[Sesay:] So Bobby, the working hypothesis here multiple locations, multiple individuals involved which begs the obvious question, why didn't this come to the attention of authorities before now?
[Bobby Chacon, Former Fbi Special Agent:] Well, it's a good question and I think from the beginning, it had earmarks of not a lone wolf, suicide type attack. These guys were not suicide they didn't get out of that truck shooting people like we had on the London Bridge. And shortly after the incident, we found out that three days ago he returned from Morocco. So it looked like there was some advanced planning to this, that he traveled overseas, maybe had gotten some help and or maybe somebody traveled with him to Morocco and didn't come back, a bomb maker perhaps. So you had some earmarks that this wasn't the run of the mill Nice, France type attack; that this was going to be a coordinated attack and there could be other follow-on attacks.
[Vause:] Ok. So Cambrils is to the north of Barcelona. To the south is Alcanar where the night before after the attack in Barcelona there was an explosion. It left one person dead. There is a suspicion that someone was trying to build some kind of explosive device. And they say all of this is linked to the car attack in Barcelona Steve. So, you know, again no other details coming from the authorities, but it does raise the question that there was at least maybe a possibility that the terrorists were considering these explosive devices to be part of that car attack.
[Moore:] It's possible or it could have been follow-on attacks.
[Vause:] All right.
[Moore:] I mean that's what we've been seeing these, what we call marauding attacks. And attack here, an attack there and these attacks don't add. They multiply. They're exponential in the grief and in the panic they cause. So I'm not believing necessarily that these vests that they were supposed to be used in the initial attack. I'm believing that there might have been a follow-up. I could be wrong but that's where my [inaudible] is.
[Sesay:] So Bobby keeping you on the investigative track for a second, if indeed we're talking about interlinked individuals, again multiple locations, multiple individuals is this a good thing for investigators because the more people the possibility that someone's being sloppy and you can pick up a trail.
[Chacon:] Well, I mean you know, it's not a good thing if there are more people out there willing to carry out these attacks and have the ability to. I mean you would as harsh as it sounds, you would prefer an attack like we've already had where it's one person carrying out one crime and that's the end of it. So it's always more disconcerting when there's more out there and you don't know because when you catch eight of them, you don't know if there's 18. When you catch one and or he kills himself in the process, there's no other trail to follow, shortly into the investigation you have a comfort level that ok, this is it. With this, once you find more then you don't know how much more is out there.
[Vause:] As a general, Bobby the more sophisticated the plot, the plan is it easier to thwart as opposed to like two guys rent a van and drive it into a crowd just on a not on a whim but you know what I mean?
[Chacon:] Yes. It's almost easy to thwart and if you have a good intelligence service at work and I'm not saying they weren't good. I'm just saying you have to have a break. When you're going to take down a coup like that, you're going to have to have a break. You're going to have to have somebody on the inside telling you something happened. These are very close-knit groups or close-knit communities. And so, you know, if you don't get that break, even in a coordinated attack, yes there's more communication required, more movement required, more things to acquire. You have to buy more things, rent more things. So all of those things represent a possible exploitation by law enforcement to get into that group.
[Sesay:] Bobby sorry. Steve what is your expectation in terms of this the movements of the driver who's still out there on the loose? Is your expectation in these kinds of situations, that he's trying to get out of the country or that he's lying low within Spain?
[Moore:] Historically in the attacks we've seen in the last year, they have not really tried very hard to get out of the country. They may be looking for support and they may be looking to circle back and do as much damage as they can because they know that life as they know it is over. And to your question, the larger the plan, yes the more vulnerable it is to detection. But the more sophisticated it is, the less the less it's trackable.
[Vause:] Sure. And Bobby and again, just to your question about a break. In April there was this arrest of nine suspects apparently linked to ISIS. They were picked up. Wasn't that a break in some ways?
[Chacon:] Well we don't I mean we don't know. That's yet to be seen. We need they need to examine whether or not there's any kind of connection between those nine. It could have been a separate cell
[Vause:] There were no links to the [inaudible] airport attack possibly.
[Chacon:] Right. But we don't know if they were linked to this attack that happened today.
[Vause:] No.
[Chacon:] So that's going to be examined. And you know, they'll come and determine whether or not they missed something. And if they do we hope that they, you know, kind of shore that up and not miss it again.
[Sesay:] And it terms of getting hold of the van, you know, that's the whole thing with these attacks. It takes low skill and tech any one can do it. But when we're talking about explosives, the possibility of explosives being involved in the mix, I mean what's your understanding in terms of Spain? How easy it is to get your hands on, you know, the arms, the guns, explosives those elements?
[Moore:] Well, the triacetone triperoxide they're using, you can pick up in any store. I mean it's peroxide that they use in a highly concentrated form for hair work. And the acetone is not hard to get either. And so the problem is it's very hard to make. And sometimes you blow yourselves up doing it which would indicate that might have happened already. So the stuff isn't hard.
[Vause:] ISIS said these attackers were soldiers of the Islamic state. There was no sort of explicit claim of responsibility. Also no photos or details of the attackers have been issued by ISIS. And Bobby I'm assuming that's because the driver is still on the run?
[Chacon:] Well, maybe. But maybe this is one of those things and we hearken all the way back to San Bernardino where the new paradigm is you can be out there and you can plan and carry out one of these attacks and as long you claim allegiance to ISIS and al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS then they will accept you as an ISIS soldier and you'll go into the afterlife as one of their martyrs. And that's what they all aspire to do. And so this is the paradigm. So ISIS, of course, comes in after the fact and claims them to be the martyrs, but that's part of the deal. The deal is we will go and carry out this attack and you will accept us as soldiers.
[Vause:] But doesn't all the elements that we're now finding out, you know, the explosion in the house the night before, the suicide belts, you know, the day after all this kind of stuff, you know, the guy heading off to Morocco all these pieces coming together indicates that maybe ISIS or someone or some group, jihadi group was more directly involved
[Chacon:] Absolutely.
[Vause:] as opposed to inspiration.
[Chacon:] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that the travel to that is key. The crucial thing to me as an investigator, first thing I picked up on was he just came back in the country. And so that tells me you don't come back and three days later carry out an attack like this. There's obviously brought much prior planning, if not planning that took place in Morocco and back and forth. So definitely this is part of a larger group, maybe even a directly-affiliated ISIS group of a tangentially affiliated group for ISIS but no doubt that this is part of a larger group.
[Sesay:] And Steve to John's point about ISIS providing no evidence, if you will, no supporting evidence to the claim that these were soldiers of the caliphate. Do they have the fact that, you know, there's this doubt, the credibility of their claim? Or is it still a win?
[Moore:] No. They this is a win because most likely they were inspired by ISIS if not directed by ISIS. The fact that they don't have identifying information is kind of outweighed or at least balanced in my opinion, by the fact that they took responsibility for it so quickly. So I think there is, you know, six degrees of separation back to Baghdadi on this one.
[Vause:] And Bobby, finally, you know, Spain is not France is not Belgium when it comes to ISIS but there is still this connection to ISIS as far as a transit point for militants coming in coming and going.
[Chacon:] Sure. And this is the new Europe, right with the refugee crisis and people willing to exploit whatever crisis is at hand. They'll exploit the things that they can exploit to move around. And freedom of movement is one of the things that enable these attacks to take place, and you know, the travel documents and traveling. So I think that that yes, I think this is part of the new Europe and they're going to have to, you know, work on identifying ways to stem some of these travel issues that they have over there.
[Vause:] Ok. We shall leave it there
[Sesay:] Gentlemen we appreciate it.
[Vause:] Bobby and Steve thank you so much for the insights.
[Sesay:] Thank you.
[Moore:] Thanks a lot.
[Chacon:] Thank you.
[Vause:] U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the news out of Barcelona by tweeting this, "The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough and strong. We love you."
[Sesay:] And then he tweeted this. "Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more radical Islamic terrorist for 35 years." But here's the thing, there is no evidence backing up President Trump's claim that in the early 1900s General John Pershing and his forces shot Muslims with bullets dipped in pink blood to deter them from the Philippine-American war. So in the face of Barcelona's horrific terrorist attack some are questioning why the President is highlighting Pershing's story.
[Vause:] Other world leaders from places all too familiar with terrorism also sending their condolences.
[Sesay:] The German Chancellor called the Barcelona attack "revolting". A spokesman for Angela Merkel writes, "We are mourning the victims of this disgusting attack in Barcelona in solidarity and friendship side by side with the Spanish."
[Vause:] British Prime Minister Theresa May tweets, "My thoughts are with the victims of today's terrible attack in Barcelona and the emergency services responding to this ongoing incident. U.K. stands with Spain against terror."
[Sesay:] French President Emmanuel Macron also voiced his solidarity with Spain, "We remain united and determined," Macron said on Twitter. He described it as a tragic attack saying his thoughts are with the victims. And London Mayor Sadiq Khan echoing that sentiment; he called it a barbaric terrorist attack in the great city of Barcelona.
[Vause:] And in Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark paying tribute to the victims of the Barcelona rampage. When we come back we'll have much more on the attack which killed 13 people, injured dozens more. You're CNN.