German woman dies, raises death toll to 16 in Spain attacks

MADRID (AP) A 51-year-old German woman died Sunday from injuries suffered in the Aug. 17 vehicle attack in Barcelona, raising the overall death toll in Spain’s recent attacks to 16, health officials in Catalonia said.

The woman died in the intensive care unit of Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, according to the regional health department.

The latest death raises the toll to 14 in the van attack in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard. Another man was stabbed to death in a carjacking that night as the van driver made his getaway, and another woman died in an Aug. 18 vehicle-and-knife attack in the nearby coastal town of Cambrils.

More than 120 people were wounded in the attacks. Authorities say 24 remain hospitalized, five of them in critical condition.

On Saturday, an estimated 500,000 peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona shouting “I’m not afraid” – a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.

Emergency workers, taxis drivers, police and ordinary citizens who helped immediately after the Las Ramblas attack led the march. They carried a street-wide banner with black capital letters reading “No Tinc Por,” which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language.

The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a slogan that Spain’s entire political class has unanimously embraced.

Spain’s central, regional and local authorities tried to send an image of unity Saturday by walking behind the emergency workers, despite earlier criticism that national and regional authorities had not shared information about the attackers well enough with each other.

In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration, walking in Barcelona along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other officials. A separate anti-violence rally was held in the northern town of Ripoll, home to many of the attackers.

Eight suspects in the attacks are dead, two are jailed under preliminary charges of terrorism and homicide and two more were freed by a judge but will remain under investigation.