Troops deployed as Britain goes on top terror alert
ALARMED: Prime Minister May said a new attack ‘may be imminent’ and stressed that the soldiers would remain under police command
MANCHESTER: Britain deployed soldiers to key sites on Wednesday and raised its terror alert to the maximum after the Manchester suicide bombing by a local man of Libyan origin who may have been radicalised in Syria.
Security services believe the suspected bomber, Salman Abedi, was likely to have had help from others in staging the attack that killed 22 people including a girl aged just eight.
Interior Minister Amber Rudd said the 22-year-old had been on the radar of the intelligence community before the massacre late on Monday at a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.
Investigators were trying to piece together the last movements of Abedi, a Manchester-born man of Libyan descent whose parents had reportedly fled the now fallen regime of Muammer Gaddafi.
After arresting a 23-year-old man on Tuesday, police said they had taken three more men into custody on Wednesday in south Manchester, where Abedi lived.
Abedi was reported to be a former business student who dropped out of university and turned to be a radical.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the bomber had “likely” been to Syria, citing information provided by British intelligence services to their counterparts in Paris.
Collomb told French television the suspect “grew up in Britain and then suddenly, after a trip to Libya and then likely to Syria, became radicalised and decided to carry out this attack”.
“In any case, the links with Daesh are proven,” he said, using a term for the IS group, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Tuesday.
In light of the Manchester attack, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance had to “step up and agree to do more in the fight against terrorism” at summit talks set for Thursday.
Rudd declined to give any further information about Abedi but told BBC radio: “It was more sophisticated than some of the attacks we’ve seen before, and it seems likely — possible — that he wasn’t doing this on his own.”
The minister said she was “not surprised at all” that IS extremists had claimed the attack but said there was no information yet to confirm the extremist organisation’s active direction.
It was the latest in a series of deadly incidents across Europe claimed by IS that have coincided with an offensive on the group’s redoubts in Syria and Iraq carried out by US, British and other Western forces.
British Prime Minister Theresa May placed the country on its highest level of terror alert — “critical” — for the first time since June 2007, when it was sparked by an attack on Glasgow airport. Around 1,000 troops were fanning out at sites such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster and foreign embassies in London to free up armed police for anti-terror duties.
May said a new attack “may be imminent” and stressed that the soldiers would remain under police command.
The Changing of the Guard, a military ceremony in front of Buckingham Palace popular with tourists, was cancelled on Wednesday and the Houses of Parliament suspended all public events.
A total of 59 people were taken to hospital, many with life-threatening conditions. Twelve of them were aged under 16.
Twenty people are still in critical care, officials said on Wednesday.
The last time troops were deployed on British streets was after a suspected airliner plot in 2003.
In a city famed globally for its football teams and pop bands like Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Smiths and Take That, show business stars and teams have joined political leaders worldwide in expressing their horror at the carnage.