Manchester bombing: government 'furious' at US leaks – as it happened

Latest coverage continues on our new live blog:

25 May 201700.49 EDT

What we know so far

Claire Phipps

The investigation

• Police continue to focus on the background of attacker Salman Abedi, amid fears the person who constructed the sophisticated bomb is still at large.
• Overnight, a controlled explosion was carried out during a raid in Moss Side.
• A woman arrested on Wednesday in Blackley in connection with the attack has been released without charge. Six men are still being questioned, among them Abedi’s 23-year-old brother Ismail Abedi.
• Their father, Ramadan Abedi, and a younger brother, Hashem Abedi, who live in Libya, have reportedly been arrested by Rada, a Tripoli militia. Libyan officials claimed Hashem knew about the planned attack.
  
• Greater Manchester police has declined to comment on claims by an unnamed Muslim community worker that they had twice contacted police with concerns about Salman Abedi, several years ago.
• There is anger among British officials about US intelligence leaks, exacerbated when the New York Times published forensic photographs of bomb parts from the crime scene.
• Prime minister Theresa May travels to the Nato summit in Brussels today, where she is expected to challenge US president Donald Trump over the series of leaks, which were criticised by the UK’s national counter-terrorism police:

When that trust is breached it undermines these relationships, and undermines our investigations and the confidence of victims, witnesses and their families. This damage is even greater when it involves unauthorised disclosure of potential evidence in the middle of a major counter-terrorism investigation.

View image in fullscreen

The victims

• More victims of the attack have been named. There will be a nationwide minute’s silence for the 22 killed and dozens wounded at 11am today.
• Late on Wednesday night, the families of 17-year-old Chloe Rutherford and 19-year-old Liam Curry confirmed they were among the 22 killed:

They lived to go to new places together and explore different cities. They wanted to be together for ever and now they are.

• Also named was 14-year-old Sorrell Leczkowski. Her grandfather Michael Healey said he was “absolutely heartbroken”:

Sorrell was only 14, but she was our rock, she kept us all grounded. She was such a clever, talented, creative girl, there was nothing she couldn’t do.

1:01

• At a vigil in Bury on Wednesday night, Charlotte Campbell, the mother of 15-year-old Olivia Campbell, said she had come to thank the many who had helped in the search for her daughter after the attack, before her death was confirmed:

I had to come. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to be... I just knew - something told me I had to come here … Please stay together. Don’t let this beat any of us, please. Don’t let my Olivia be a victim.

• Ariana Grande, who was performing at Manchester Arena on the night of the attack, has suspended her European tour.

The mother and grandmother of Sorrell Leczkowski were injured in the blast that killed her, police have said.

Her grandmother Pauline Healey is in intensive care, and her mother Samantha is recovering from surgery “as she tries to make sense of the devastating loss of her daughter”, a family statement said.

The grandfather of 14-year-old Sorrell Leczkowski, who was killed in the blast, has paid tribute to her.

Michael Healey said he was “absolutely heartbroken”:

Sorrell was only 14, but she was our rock, she kept us all grounded. She was such a clever, talented, creative girl, there was nothing she couldn’t do.

View image in fullscreen

The focus of the police investigation is whether Salman Abedi was part of a wider terror network, Ian Cobain and Ewen MacAskill report:

Police and the security service are focusing upon the Libyan connections of the Manchester suicide bomber. Salman Abedi travelled to see his mother, father, younger brother and sister in Libya last week but Whitehall sources said they suspected there were also what they termed “nefarious purposes” behind his visit to Tripoli.

His father, Ramadan, and younger brother, Hashem, 20, were reported to have been arrested by a militia in Tripoli on suspicion of having links with Islamic State.

British police were also investigating Abedi’s connections in Manchester, including among the city’s Libyan community.

Greater Manchester police’s chief constable, Ian Hopkins, said the public should be aware that “this is a network that we are investigating”, while the home secretary, Amber Rudd, said that the relatively sophisticated nature of the attack suggested he may have had support. Pictures of the remnants of the bomb that emerged on Wednesday suggested that whoever constructed it was an expert.

“It seems likely, possible, that he wasn’t doing this on his own,” Rudd said.

Among the greatest concerns of the police and the security service are that Abedi may not have constructed the bomb that he detonated at the Manchester Arena on Monday night, meaning a bomb-maker remains at large.

Greater Manchester police says the woman detained in Blackley on Wednesday in connection with the attack has been released without charge.

Six men are still being questioned.

Sky News reports that police believe these CCTV images show Salman Abedi, the bomber, in Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre on Friday evening last week.

The images suggest he purchased the blue rucksack which – according to images from the blast scene leaked to the New York Times – he had with him when he launched his attack on the arena.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has criticised intelligence leaks that have seen key details of the investigation reported in the US media.

Burnham told BBC2’s Newnight on Wednesday evening that the leaks were “not acceptable” and could compromise the investigation:

It troubles me. On Monday evening when the reports were first coming through to me, I agreed with the chief constable and others we would take a cautious approach to putting public information out because we wouldn’t want to get anything wrong or compromise the police investigation.

And yet the first reports were coming seemingly out of the United States. So that is concerning, because obviously you want international cooperation when it comes to sharing of information because events like this can have that broader dimension. But it worries me greatly and in fact I made known my concerns about it to the US ambassador.

It’s not acceptable to me … there is a live investigation taking place; we cannot have information being put in the public domain that’s not in the direct control of the British police and security services …

Many terrorist atrocities have an international dimension where security services from around the world need to cooperate quickly. But they’ve got to do that, surely, on a basis of trust and confidentiality. And to have information put in the public domain before it was put there by people here is just wrong.

Greater Manchester police earlier confirmed its officers had carried out a controlled explosion in Moss Side.

Locals reported hearing a “loud bang” in the area south of the city centre at around 1.45am on Thursday, Press Association reports.

The explosion was heard in the neighbouring areas of Rusholme and Fallowfield, with concerned locals taking to social media. One wrote: “Does anyone know if the loud bang heard at 1:45amish this morning in/near Moss Side & Rusholme was an un/controlled explosion?”

At a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday, Theresa May will meet Donald Trump and is expected to challenge him about the stream of leaks of crucial intelligence about the Manchester bomb attack that has appeared in the US media:

British officials were infuriated on Wednesday when the New York Times published forensic photographs of sophisticated bomb parts that UK authorities fear could complicate the expanding investigation into the lethal blast.

It was the latest of a series of leaks to US journalists that appeared to come from inside the US intelligence community, passing on data that had been shared between the two countries as part of a long-standing security cooperation.

A senior Whitehall source said: “These images from inside the American system are clearly distressing to victims, their families and other members of the public. Protests have been lodged at every relevant level between the British authorities and our US counterparts. They are in no doubt about our huge strength of feeling on this issue. It is unacceptable.”

Police chiefs also criticised the leaking of information from the investigation. A National Counter Terrorism Policing spokesperson said: “We greatly value the important relationships we have with our trusted intelligence, law enforcement and security partners around the world.

“When that trust is breached it undermines these relationships, and undermines our investigations and the confidence of victims, witnesses and their families. This damage is even greater when it involves unauthorised disclosure of potential evidence in the middle of a major counter-terrorism investigation.”

Greater Manchester police has just issued a statement:

This morning (Thursday 25 May 2017) we have been carrying out searches at an address in the Moss Side area during which a controlled explosion took place.

These searches are connected to Monday’s attack on the Manchester Arena, but this is a fast-moving investigation and we are keeping an open mind at this stage.

As it stands, six men and one woman have been arrested in conjunction with the investigation and remain in custody for questioning.

25 May 201721.28 EDT

Jamie Grierson

Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Tell MAMA, which monitors and records Islamophobic hate crimes, said there had been a “measurable” spike in incidents targeting Muslims in the last 24 hours, including verbal abuse, spitting and headscarfs being pulled from the heads of Muslim women:

After the major terrorist incident we have seen a measurable spike in anti-Muslim hate incidents coming into Tell MAMA.

The pattern has been followed in this case, with a time lag and then a measurable spike of hate incidents. These range from general street level abuse to online hate and threats, and the Oldham mosque case of arson after Manchester. So there is a clear measurable spike.

Mughal said there was not as dramatic a spike after the Westminster attack in March that claimed the lives of five people, including a police officer:

The reality is that each terrorist attack is unique in the impacts that it causes. The Westminster terrorist attack, we assumed, would cause a spike in anti-Muslim hate incidents and it did not to any major level. The spike was small and clearly, in relation to anti-Muslim hate incidents, the impact was low.

Therefore, who is attacked through terrorism seems to be related to how much of a blowback effect there will be against communities and Muslims, if a member of the community is the perpetrator. So each situation is unique, but Manchester clearly affects us all given that innocent young children and their parents were targeted.

25 May 201721.02 EDT

Nazia Parveen

The father of Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena suicide bomber, fought against the Gaddafi regime with a group that was designated a terrorist organisation by the US, according to a man who says he fought alongside him.

Salman Abedi, 22 is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week. His parents, Ramadan Abedi and Samia Tabbal, who escaped the Gaddafi regime in the early 1990s and fled to the UK, now live in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Their youngest son, Hashem, 20, is also believed to be with them in Libya – and on Wednesday both Hashem and Ramadan were said to have been arrested, reportedly by a local militia.

Akram Ramadan, 49, who fought with Ramadan Abedi in the Libyan revolution, said he was passionate about overthrowing a regime that had “displaced thousands of his brethren … It was something we all felt we had to do. Some were more radical than others but we all shared a common cause.”