Manchester bomber ‘did not act alone’
THE BOMBER who killed 22 people at a concert on Monday night probably had help, Britain’s top domestic security official said yesterday, as the nation’s threat level was raised and the military was allowed to be deployed to guard public events.
In an interview with the BBC, Home Secretary Amber Rudd did not provide details of who Salman Abedi might have been working with when he detonated explosives in an attack that targeted teenage concertgoers, but she said security services – which had been aware of Abedi “up to a point” before the bombing – were focusing on his visits to Libya, at least one of which was recent.
Her French counterpart, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, told broadcaster BFMTV that Abedi might have also gone to Syria and he had “proven” links with Islamic State.
British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Tuesday night announcement, which takes Britain’s alert level from “severe” to its highest rating, “critical”, clears the way for thousands of British troops to take to the streets and replace police officers in guarding key sites.
May announced the move after chairing an emergency meeting of her security cabinet and concluding that Abedi might have been part of a wider network that was poised to strike again. The decision, she said, was “a proportionate and sensible response to the threat that our security experts judge we face”.
The worst terrorist attack on British soil in more than a decade was carried out by a British-born son of Libyan immigrants who was born and raised a short drive from the concert hall that he transformed from a scene of youthful celebration into a tableau of horror.
Health officials said yesterday that in addition to the dead, 20 people remained in critical care and were suffering from horrific injuries.
The attack, which came at the close of a concert in this northern English city by American pop star Ariana Grande, was claimed on Tuesday by IS.
Even as officials and experts cast doubt on the terrorist group’s assertion, however, authorities were scrambling to execute searches, arrest potential accomplices and reinforce security systems at a spectrum of public events that look newly vulnerable to attacks like Monday’s.
The police’s priority, said Greater Manchester Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, was to establish whether Abedi was acting alone or as part of a network.
Experts said it was unlikely that the attack was carried out without help. “Getting a car or a knife is easy,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “Making a bomb that works and goes off when you want it to go off takes preparation and practice. And it usually involves other people.” – Washington Post