STOICISM, SOLIDARITY AND SWEEPING ARRESTS
Shattered city seeks to heal itself as investigation deepens
A British broadcaster says it has obtained security camera footage that police believe shows the suspect in the Manchester Arena bombing wearing a backpack that was used in the attack. Sky News on Wednesday aired two screen shots of a man walking in Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre on Friday night carrying a blue backpack with a sales tag still hanging off it.
Sky did not say in its report how it obtained the footage. But the broadcaster reported that police think the man is the alleged bomber, Salman Abedi, and the backpack played a role in Monday’s attack after an Ariana Grande concert.
Twenty-two people were killed in the attack and 119 were injured, including 20 who are in critical condition.
Security forces rounded up more sus- pects Wednesday and soldiers fanned out across the country to national landmarks as an on-edge Britain tried to thwart the possibility of additional attacks.
Manchester police said a woman was arrested in connection with the arena bombing. She was detained during a series of property searches in the Blackley area of the city, authorities said.
The unidentified woman is the seventh person who has been arrested in England since Monday’s bombing. One of them is the older brother of the alleged bomber. Abedi’s father and younger brother also have been detained in Libya.
The Manchester police chief leading the investigation said Wednesday that the attacker had not acted alone and that authorities were trying to unravel a wider web of plotters.
“I think it’s very clear this is a network we are investigating,” Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said as authorities raided British properties thought to be connected to Salman Abedi, 22.
British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Abedi “likely” did not act alone in the strike at the close of an Ariana Grande concert Monday night and that he had been known to security forces “up to a point.” Meanwhile, officials probed possible travel by the alleged bomber, looking for clues to new threats.
Government officials said nearly 1,000 soldiers were deployed to Buckingham Palace, Parliament and other high-profile sites across the country.
Britain’s terror threat level was raised to “critical” — the highest level — on Tuesday over concern another attack could be imminent.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Abedi was believed to have travelled to Syria and had “proven” links to Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
British officials, however, have not commented on whether Abedi had links to Daesh or other extremist groups.
British authorities said one thread of the inquiry involved pursuing whether Abedi was part of a larger terror cell that included Mohamed Abrini, otherwise known as “the man in the hat,” with connections to the Brussels and Paris attacks.
Abrini had visited Manchester in 2015.
In Tripoli, Libya, where Abedi’s father and 18-year-old brother were detained, Ramadan Abedi denied in an interview with The Associated Press before he was taken into custody that his son had links to militants, saying, “We don’t believe in killing innocents.”
The elder Abedi was allegedly a member of the Al Qaeda-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting group in the 1990s, according to a former Libyan security official, Abdel-Basit Haroun. The Libyan anti-terror force that arrested the men said in a statement that 18-year-old Hashim Abedi confessed that he and his brother were linked to Daesh and that he was aware of the Manchester arena bombing plan.
The anti-terror force said the father had not been charged, but was taken in for questioning.
A second brother, Ismail Abedi, 23, was taken into custody in Manchester a day earlier.
On Wednesday, a throng of people filled a Manchester square for a second night of vigils for the victims. Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders echoed a message that extremists wouldn’t drive a wedge among the city’s religious groups.
“There are no divisions here tonight,” Irfan Chishti, the imam of Manchester’s biggest mosque, said.