ADVERTISEMENT

CNN: There Will Be Questions About Whether Barcelona Attack Was 'Copycat' of Charlottesville

August 17, 2017

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said Thursday there would be questions if the Barcelona terror attack involving a van crashing into a group of people was a "copycat" of what happened in Charlottesville, Va.

At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 were injured in Barcelona on Thursday when men rammed their van into a crowd of pedestrians at Las Ramblas, a popular tourism area in the city in northeastern Spain. The attack came five days after a man with white supremacist group ties was arrested for driving his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring multiple others.

CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto said the "shared tactics" of the attackers in both instances was "alarming."

"In light of the uproar of the last several days, five days apart you have a white supremacist in Charlottesville use a vehicle to kill, and here you have attackers at least following the modus operandi of terrorists using vehicles apparently to kill as well, and those shared tactics that should be alarming," Sciutto said.

"There will be questions about copycats," Blitzer said. "There will be questions if what happened in Barcelona was at all a copycat version of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia. Even though there may be different characters, different political ambitions, they used the same killing device: a vehicle going at high speed into a group, a large group of pedestrians."

There have been multiple terror attacks before the events in Charlottesville involving perpetrators using cars; last July, a terrorist in Nice, France, killed 84 people by plowing his truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day.

UPDATE: 2:34 P.M.: This article was updated with more up-to-date information on the victims in Barcelona.