Daesh about to explode Eiffel Tower

In the weeks before terrorists ploughed a van through pedestrians on Las Ramblas boulevard, a cell of jihadists inspired by ISIS travelled repeatedly to France, according to footage and documents analysed by Fernando Reinares and Carola García-Calvo from the Royal Institute’s Program on Global Terrorism in Madrid.

The terror group recorded footage of the Eiffel Tower, which led Mr Reinares and Ms García-Calvo to believe the jihadis had planned to strike the Eiffel Tower with a “potentially more deadly operation”.

They said: “The existing evidence indicates the terrorist cell had planned a far more ambitious and potentially more deadly operation.

“Considering the lethal resources assembled by the terrorists and their lethal intent, the death toll could have reached hundreds had they not accidentally blown up their bomb factory.”

According to Mr Reinares and Ms García-Calvo the terror group’s plans were derailed a day before the Barcelona attacks after an abandoned house where they were storing explosive powder in the Spanish town of Alcanar exploded.

Terrorists responsible for the deadly Barcelona attack may have had plans to target the Eiffel Tower

The explosion demolished the building, burying two of the cell’s 10 members and injuring a third.

The terror experts claim the explosion prompted the other cell members to move up the timings of attacks on Barcelona and Cambrils.

In a sheet inside the notebook, they found a handwritten note in Arabic describing the cell members as “soldiers of the Islamic State in the land of al-Andalus”.

Within hours of the first attack, and again after the second, ISIS’s news agency, Amaq, claimed credit, describing the attackers as “soldiers of the Islamic State.”

ISIS media claimed the Barcelona attackers ‘were soldiers of the Islamic State’

However, authorities have said so far there is no evidence that the terror cell was being trained by ISIS operatives abroad.

In addition to the footage of the Eiffel Tower, a mobile phone used by one of the terror cell’s member included searches on Google Maps for several locations in Spain, including the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona and the Camp Nou soccer stadium, which the researchers believe may also have been targeted.

Spanish officials reportedly warned their French counterparts about recovered the footage of the Eiffel Tower soon after the Barcelona attack.

According to Mr Reinares and Ms García-Calvo, the French government also determined that the cell may have intended to strike Paris and this prompted a glass fence to be installed around the Eiffel Tower.

The two experts published their findings in the CTC Sentinel, the publication of the Combating Terrorism Center based in New York.

And it is based on interviews with investigators, a review of court proceedings and an analysis of videos, images and other materials recovered from the scenes.