Reuters, Manchester :
The Manchester suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a concert venue packed with children was part of a network, the city’s chief of police said on Wednesday as troops were deployed across Britain to help prevent further attacks. Police made three new arrests and searched an address in central Manchester in what police chief Ian Hopkins described as a fast-moving investigation.
“I think it’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigating,” Hopkins told reporters outside Manchester police headquarters.
“And as I’ve said, it continues at a pace. There’s extensive investigations going on and activity taking place across Greater Manchester as we speak.”
Earlier, interior minister Amber Rudd said the bomber, Salman Abedi, had recently returned from Libya. Her French counterpart Gerard Collomb said he had links with Islamic State and had probably visited Syria as well.
Rudd scolded U.S. officials for leaking details about the investigation into the Manchester attack before British authorities were prepared to go public.
The Manchester bombing has raised concern across Europe. Cities including Paris, Nice, Brussels, St Petersburg, Berlin and London have suffered militant attacks in the last two years.
British-born Abedi, 22, blew himself up on Monday night at the Manchester Arena indoor venue at the end of a concert by U.S. pop singer Ariana Grande attended by thousands of children and teenagers.
His 22 victims included an eight-year-old girl, several teenage girls, a 28-year-old man and a Polish couple who had come to collect their daughters.
Britain’s official terror threat level was raised to “critical”, the highest level, late on Tuesday, meaning an attack could be imminent. Rudd said up to 3,800 soldiers could be deployed on Britain’s streets, taking on guard duties to free up police to focus on patrols and investigation. An initial deployment of 984 had been ordered, first in London and then elsewhere.
Soldiers were seen at the Houses of Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Downing Street residence and at London police headquarters at New Scotland Yard.
A source close to the investigation into the bombing told Reuters that the focus was on whether Abedi had received help in putting together the bomb and on where it had been done.
The BBC reported that security services thought the bomb was too sophisticated for Abedi to have built by himself.
Police arrested three people in South Manchester on Wednesday, bringing the total number of arrests related to the attack to four. A man arrested on Tuesday was reported by British and U.S. media to be Abedi’s brother.
Police also said that they had searched an address in central Manchester as part of the investigation and had briefly closed a railway line in order to do so safely but that it had now been re-opened.
In London, the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, a draw for tourists, was cancelled because it requires support from police officers, which authorities decided was not a good use of police resources given the threat level.
Chelsea soccer club said it had cancelled a victory parade that had been scheduled to take place on Sunday to celebrate its Premier League title.
Several high-profile sporting events are coming up in Britain, including the soccer FA Cup final at London’s Wembley Stadium and the English rugby club competition final at Twickenham on Saturday and the UEFA Champions League final at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on June 3.
Britain also has a national election scheduled for June 8. All campaigning was suspended after the attack, although the UK Independence Party said it would resume its activities on Thursday.
Greater Manchester Police said they were now confident they knew the identity of all the people who lost their lives and had made contact with all the families. They said they would formally name the victims after forensic post-mortems, which would take four or five days.
The bombing also left 64 people wounded, of whom 20 were receiving critical care for highly traumatic injuries to major organs and to limbs, a health official said. Rudd was asked by the BBC about the fact that information about Abedi, including his name, had come out of the United States before it was cleared by British authorities.
“The British police have been very clear that they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity, the element of surprise, so it is irritating if it gets released from other sources, and I have been very clear with our friends that should not happen again.”
France, which has repeatedly been hit by devastating militant attacks since 2015, extended emergency powers.
The Manchester bombing was the deadliest attack in Britain since July 2005, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people in coordinated attacks on London’s transport network.
Prime Minister Theresa May said soldiers would be placed in key public locations to support armed police in protecting the public. These include Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, embassies and the Palace of Westminster. Military personnel may also be seen at other events over the coming weeks, such as concerts, Mrs May said, working under the command of police officers.
The prime minister said she did not want the public to feel “unduly alarmed” but said it was a “proportionate and sensible response”. Mrs Rudd said 984 troops had been deployed in the first instance. Up to 3,800 are available. She said she “absolutely” expected the raising of the threat level to critical to be temporary.
She added the bomber had been known “up to a point” by the intelligence services.
Mrs Rudd also said there would be an “uplift” in Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation programme, after June. This had already been planned before Monday’s attack, she added.
The highest threat level, which is decided by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre – a group of experts from the police, government departments and agencies – has only been reached twice before.
The first time the threat level was raised to critical was in 2006 during a major operation to stop a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid bombs.
The following year, security chiefs raised it once more as they hunted for the men who had tried to bomb a London nightclub, before going on to attack Glasgow Airport.
The Metropolitan Police says it has increased its presence across London, including specialist police officers who are trained “to spot the tell-tale signs that a person may be carrying out hostile reconnaissance or committing other crime… based on extensive research into the psychology of criminals and what undermines their activities”. The change in terror threat comes after investigators were unable to rule out whether the bomber, named by police as Salman Abedi, had help carrying out the attack.
He is understood to be a 22-year-old born in Manchester to parents of Libyan descent, and a former Salford University student.
Hamid El-Sayed, who worked for the UN on tackling radicalisation and who now works at Manchester University, said Abedi had a “really bad relationship” with his family.
He said, according to a family friend, that Abedi’s parents had tried to “bring him back on the right path and they failed to do that”. “Eventually he was doing very bad at his university, at his education, and he didn’t complete, and they tried to take him back to Libya several times. He had difficulties adjusting to European lifestyle.”
Apart from the three arrests in south Manchester on Wednesday, Abedi’s older brother was arrested in Chorlton, south Manchester, in connection with the attack.
Met Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who is the national counter-terrorism policing lead, said the investigation was “fast-moving and making good progress”.
“However, a critical line of inquiry is whether the dead terrorist was acting alone or part of a group,” he said.
“We still have critical lines of inquiry they’re chasing down which has led to a level of uncertainty.”
Anyone with information about the attack can call the anti-terror hotline on 0800 789321.
Meanwhile, a man with a knife has been arrested near Buckingham Palace, but Scotland Yard said this incident was not believed to be terror related.
Thousands of people turned out for the vigil in Manchester and to hold a minute’s silence to remember those who died. Vigils were also held elsewhere.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Commons Speaker John Bercow stood on stage alongside Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins.
