Britain yesterday raced to track down an Islamic militant network suspected of orchestrating the Manchester concert attack, as a row escalated between London and Washington over leaked material from the probe.
As more children were named among the 22 victims of Monday’s massacre, the suicide bomber’s father and brother were arrested in Libya, and British police arrested a seventh person in connection with the investigation.
However, they were left “furious” by repeated leaks of material shared with their US counterparts, which provided an awkward backdrop for British Prime Minister Theresa May’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Brussels later yesterday.
Photo: AP
In Manchester, feelings were still raw following bomber Salman Abedi’s attack on a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.
However, Manchester United fans stood together in defiance as their team’s triumph in the Europa League final brought some much-needed smiles to a city still in pain.
The club dedicated their trophy to those killed, while manager Jose Mourinho said they would gladly exchange it if it could bring their lives back.
According to photographs from the scene of Monday’s attack at the Manchester Arena, Abedi’s device appeared to be fairly sophisticated.
Images obtained by the New York Times showed a detonator that Abedi was said to have carried in his left hand, shrapnel including nuts and screws, and the shredded remains of a blue backpack.
After of the bomber’s identity and details of the probe were leaked, the intelligence-sharing relationship between London and Washington was left rocking.
“We are furious. This is completely unacceptable,” a British government ministry source said of the images “leaked from inside the US system.”
The British National Counter Terrorism Policing Network said the breach of trust caused great “damage” and “undermines our investigations.”
British police have stopped sharing information on the suicide bombing in Manchester with the US, the BBC reported yesterday, because of fears that leaks in the US media could hinder a hunt for a possible bomb maker still at large.
If confirmed, the halt to the sharing of investigative details with Britain’s most important defense and security ally would underscore the level of anger in Britain at leaks to the US media of details about the police investigation.
Abedi grew up in a Libyan family that reportedly fled to Manchester to escape the now-fallen regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
His father Ramadan and younger brother Hashem were detained in Libya, authorities there said.
A spokesman for the Libyan Deterrence Force said the brother was aware of Abedi’s plan and the siblings were both members of the Islamic State militant group.
Hashem had been “under surveillance for a month and a half” and “investigation teams supplied intelligence that he was planning a terrorist attack in the capital Tripoli,” the force said on Facebook.
Abedi had arrived from Libya four days before the bombing, a relative said.
British officials said Abedi had been on the radar of the intelligence community before the massacre.
“It’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigating,” Manchester Police Chief Ian Hopkins told reporters.
Six men and one woman have been arrested and were being held in custody, with the probe widening beyond Manchester to Nuneaton in central England.
Police early yesterday said they conducted a controlled explosion in the south of Manchester where they were carrying out searches in the Moss Side area connected to the attack.
Elders at the Didsbury mosque in south Manchester believed to have been frequented by Abedi said that his actions were wholly alien to their preaching and cited online radicalization.
“This act of cowardice has no place in our religion,” mosque trustee Fawzi Haffar said.
A national minute’s silence was to be observed at 11am local time for those killed and the dozens seriously wounded.
After the NATO summit, May was to head to the G7 gathering today in Italy, but she is to curtail her trip, returning home late today and missing tomorrow’s talks.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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