MADRID: The suspect in a machete attack on two churches in southern Spain in which one clergyman was killed and another seriously injured is a 25-year-old Moroccan man who was due to be deported from the country, police said on Thursday.
The suspect was arrested on Wednesday evening after a man wielding a machete attacked several people at the churches of San Isidro and Nuestra Senora de La Palma, around 300 meters apart, in the southern port city of Algeciras.
Police said they took the suspect to his home overnight for detectives to conduct a search, a spokesman for Spain’s National Police said.
He is expected to be transferred to the Spanish capital Madrid later on Thursday to appear before a High Court judge on terrorism charges at a time to be confirmed, police and court spokespeople said.
A police source denied local media reports that the suspect had been under surveillance by security operatives in the days or months before the attack.
He had no criminal nor terrorism-related convictions either in Spain or other allied countries, the source said, declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the case.
The man was not in Spain legally and his deportation process began in June last year and was ongoing, the source added.
Diego Valencia, a sacristan at the Nuestra Senora de La Palma church, was killed after the assailant chased him out of the church and attacked him in the busy square outside, police and church groups said.
A second man, the priest of the parish church of San Isidro, Antonio Rodriguez, was operated on last night for serious knife wounds and is said to be in a stable condition, the city’s mayor told local television.
Local media said three others were injured, though police did not confirm.
Mayor José Antonio Landaluce said the attacker’s knife narrowly missed the priest’s spinal cord. “He lost a lot of blood, the stretcher was soaked with blood but if everything goes well he could be discharged today at the end of the day,” he told TVE. An official day of mourning has been declared by the city’s mayor who will host a gathering at midday on Thursday outside the church where Valencia died.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who will travel to the city on Thursday, said the search of the suspect’s home will help police determine whether terrorism was at play.
“There were no third persons involved in what happened,” he said.
Mayor José Antonio Landaluce has also called on the Interior Ministry for an increase in security for the city, according to an interview with COPE radio.
The port of Algeciras in the Andalucia region serves as the main entry point for Moroccans arriving in Spain.
Spain suffered the worst Islamist militant attack on record in Europe in 2004, when 192 people were killed and more than 1,800 injured in multiple bombings on Madrid’s train system.
According to a High Court ruling, the perpetrators were linked to Al Qaeda and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
In 2017, 16 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in a series of attacks that included Islamist militants in a van mowing down pedestrians on Barcelona’s iconic Las Ramblas boulevard.
Spain church machete attack suspect was 25-year-old Moroccan, police confirm
https://arab.news/4734a
Spain church machete attack suspect was 25-year-old Moroccan, police confirm
- The man was in Spain illegally and his deportation process began in June last year and was ongoing
- The port of Algeciras in the Andalucia region serves as the main entry point for Moroccans arriving in Spain
Russia says captured Ukraine’s Siversk in key eastern region
- The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said
- He said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents
MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday its troops had seized full control of Siversk, a Ukrainian city in the eastern Donetsk region where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, though Ukraine denied the key settlement had been lost.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine and taking ground from outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces, with some of the fiercest battles taking place in Donetsk.
Russia’s military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces had captured Siversk in a report to President Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting with army commanders.
The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said, thanking the commanders and soldiers “for their combat work.”
Putin said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents before the war, claiming that the Russian offensive was “practically impossible to hold back.”
The Ukrainian army’s eastern command denied Russian claims it had taken Siversk, saying that it “remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions but most of these units are being destroyed on the approaches,” it added in a Facebook post.
Siversk is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donbas — an industrial and mining region in Moscow’s sights.
Moscow earlier this month said it had captured Pokrovsk, a former road and rail hub also in Donetsk, but Kyiv claims fighting in the city is still ongoing.
Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims in eastern Ukraine if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace deal.
Eastern Ukraine has been ravaged since Russia launched its assault in February 2022, with tens of thousands of people killed and millions forced to flee their homes.
