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Newly elected Rector of the University of Glasgow Aamer Anwar, was witness to the terror attack that took place in Barcelona around 5pm Thursday. Anwar, attending a human rights conference in the city, was walking in Las Ramblas when a car drove into a crowd of pedestrians on the busy main street.
Speaking to the media Mr Anwar said: “I had been to the Cathedral and walking down Las Ramblas for something to eat. Part of it was in the shade so I decided to keep walking down and literally within 10 seconds there was a crashing noise.
“I turned around and people were screaming – I could see a woman screaming with her kids – people started running and jumping into shops. I ran for about 50 or 100 metres and stopped to see what was happening. The police were very quickly on the scene and getting people to move back.
“I could see chaos right at the top area and I spoke to a shopkeeper who had run down and was screaming. He was Bengali so I spoke to him in Urdu and he said a van had driven into a crowd and he thought there were five to six people very seriously injured.”
Anwar posted two videos of the situation as it unfolded on Twitter, writing, “Can’t believe this I’m on Ramblas, heard screaming & whole street ran- a car believed drove in2crowd- had walked down 10secs earlier”
Total panic – we are all getting pushed back- la Ramblas pic.twitter.com/1MwYLfFZJc
— Aamer Anwar (@AamerAnwar) 17 August 2017
The attack, which has since been claimed by Islamic State, killed at the time of writing a total of 13 people, and has left over 80 people injured, 15 of which are “seriously injured”. Two people have been arrested in connection with the attack and the Catalonian president, Carles Puigdemont has declared a three day period of mourning in the region.
