Spanish police treating knife assault on police station as ‘terrorist attack’

The attacker entered a police station in Cornella, near Barcelona.

An assault on a police station by a knife-wielding man who was shot dead by an officer in northeastern Spain is being treated as a “terrorist attack,” police said Monday.

The body of a man who tried to attack a police station is carried out of the premises in Cornella near the northeastern Spanish city of Barcelona on August 20. (AFP Photo)

“We are treating it as a terrorist attack. The officer used his gun to save his own life,” Rafel Comes, a commissioner with the Catalan regional police, told a news conference in Cornella de Llobregat where the attack took place.

The man entered a police station in Cornella, near Barcelona, just before 6:00 am (0400 GMT) “to attack the officers” and was “shot down”, Catalonia regional police said on Twitter.

Anti-terrorism police sources said the man, a 29-year-old Algerian who lived in the area, had shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) as he entered the station.