Britain goes on high alert amid fears
Threat level up after concert blast; police look for possible accomplices.
— Britain’s prime minister put the nation on its highest level of alert Tuesday and deployed the military to work with the police over fears that another terrorist attack was imminent.
The announcement came as the police continued to investigate whether the Monday night bombing at a pop music concert in Manchester that killed 22 people, including children, was part of a broader conspiracy.
“It is a possibility we cannot ignore that there is a wider group of individuals linked to this
attack,” Prime Minister Theresa May said in Manchester after a meeting of her top security officials.
Earlier in the day, the police raided the home of Salman Abedi, the man they identified as the bomber; he died in the blast. Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of the Greater Manchester Police said that the investigation was focusing on determin
ing “whether Mr. Abedi was acting alone or as part of a network.”
A senior U.S. official said Tuesday night that Abedi had traveled multiple times to Libya, where his parents immigrated from, but did not know the timing of his last trip. The official was not authorized to discuss the information publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
By raising the national threat level from severe to critical, May suggested “not only that an attack remains highly likely, but that a further attack may be immi- nent.”
As the authorities bol- stered the nation’s defenses, investigators set out to learn as much as they could about
Abedi, 22, who lived with his family only a few miles from where he detonated a homemade bomb on a public concourse crowded with Grande’s adoring teenage fans leaving the arena.
Rescue workers sifting through the carnage outside the arena Monday night discovered Abedi’s identifi- cation card. That clue led the police to the home he shared with his family on Elsmore Road, in the Fallowfield district. The police blew the house’s door off its frame, to safeguard against booby traps, as shocked neighbors watched.
Abedi was born in 1994 in Britain, according to a law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investi- gation was still underway.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in one post on social media that “one of the sol
diers of the caliphate was able to place an explosive device within a gathering of the crusaders in the city of Manchester.” It was one of several Islamic State statements, some contradictory, posted on different social media accounts.
A neighbor of the Abedi family in the Fallowfield district, southwest of the Manchester city center, said that the mother, who taught the Quran, had been abroad for about two months. A trustee of the Manchester
Islamic Center said Abedi’s father and his brother Ismael attended the mosque, but the trustee, Fawzi Haffar, did not know if Abedi worshipped there.
A senior member of the Muslim community in Manchester and a law enforce- ment official who requested
anonymity said Abedi had been barred from the mosque in 2015 for expressing his support for the Islamic State, and he came to the attention of intelligence agen- cies at the time as “a person of interest.”
In raising the threat level, May cited information gath- ered Tuesday in the investi- gation into the Manchester bombing, and said the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, the body responsible for setting the level, would continue to review the situation.
After the prime minister’s announcement, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, said in a statement that “we are flex- ing our resources to increase police presence at key sites, such as transport and other crowded places and we are reviewing key events over the coming weeks.” “I have asked for sup
port from the military to be deployed alongside the police,” Rowley added. “This will free up armed officers from certain guarding duties to release our officers to sup- port the wider response.”
As part of their investi- gation into the Manchester bombing, the police arrested a 23-year-old man outside a supermarket near Abedi’s home, but it was not imme-
diately clear if that man was connected in some way to the attack.
The terrorist attack was the worst in the history of Manchester, a city of a half-mil- lion people, and the worst in Britain since July 7, 2005, when 52 people died, along
with four assailants, in coordinated attackson London’s transit system.
Security experts suggested that the use of an improvised explosive device in Manchester displays a level of sophis
tication that implied collaborators — and the possibility that other bombs had been made at the same time.
Chris Phillips, a former leader of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office in Britain, told the BBC: “It has involved a lot of planning — it’s a bit of a step up. This is a much more professional-style attack.”
President Donald Trump phoned May from Jerusalem on Tuesday morning. Later, speaking at a news conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the
Palestinian Authority, Trump castigated what he called the “evil losers” responsible.
The attack came in the final stretch of campaigning before a general election in Britain on June 8,
and the country’s political parties agreed to suspend campaigning on Tuesday.