Manchester, United Kingdom. In breaking news, the ISIS terrorist bombing does not seem to be a “lone wolf” incident as Police now report 3 persons in custody as events rapidly unfold.
Residents at a block of flats in Manchester city centre have been evacuated by heavily armed police and men wearing camouflage gear, as police search for other terrorists from the ISIS cell responsible for last night’s attack in Manchester, England.
One woman said the fire alarm went off at the Granby Row flats near Piccadilly Station at 12.30 before “police and soldiers” streamed into the building. Speaking on Sky News she said a flat on the third floor had been raided.
Major criticism is being levelled at the leaking of the suspect’s name by American Intelligence officials. It is not just Amber Rudd who is criticising the US intelligence services for leaking Salman Abedi’s name.
A Democratic member of that Senate foreign relations committee says it’s troubling that allies such as Britain are being forced to question sharing intelligence with US. Asked about the apparently casual way US intelligence sources had shared intelligence about the Manchester attack, Sen Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the senate foreign relations committee told reporters;
“Our alliance with the people of Great Britain is one of our closest strongest oldest and our prayers are with them. The families who lost loved ones in Manchester … We’ve got a very close intelligence and defence partnership with the UK and that news is troubling and it suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence.
“This is a key part of what keeps us safe, a global network of allies with whom we share intelligence and strategic and planning and defence resources … I am hearing real questions raised about whether this administration, in particular President Trump understands what it means to treat highly classified intelligence carefully and responsibly.”
The British intelligence has been explaining why the security services think Abedi may have been a “mule” for a bomb made by someone else.
Speaking on a radio show, one expert said the security services did not have credible intelligence that an attack was coming. But he added: They are having to take no chances because they don’t think the bomber acted alone. This was too sophisticated a device for one man, particularly this particular individual, Salman Abedi, to have put together himself. Ergo, somebody did it for them.
In other words, he was the mule carrying a device built by somebody else. That person is still at large, so they have got to assume there is the possibility of another attack. Worst-case scenario, this guy is building more devices and lining up more people. Hopefully that is not the case.
He said the authorities believed Abedi had returned from Libya to the UK only a few days ago, “which wouldn’t have given him enough time to build the device himself, it is thought”.
Gardner added that he expected Britain’s security alert level to remain at critical for a relatively short time. He said: “Critical means that leave gets cancelled, the police get very, very stretched. They can only do this for a limited period of time. Probably not much longer than a week, frankly.
“But while there is this high state of anxiety that there could be a bomb-maker out there with other devices, possibly other suicide volunteers to carry them out, they have got to deploy all the police they can, including armed police. This is why there is a high alert and full scale terrorist hunt.