Manchester, United Kingdom. Just as Britons thought things were getting back to normal, anti-terrorist police in the UK make even more arrests in the Manchester bombing.
Police security was highly-visible as 40,000 runners took to Manchester’s streets for the Great Manchester Run a day after Prime Minister Theresa May lowered the terror threat level, which had been hiked after Monday’s carnage.
British Anti-terror police launched fresh raids and arrested two more people Sunday in connection with the Manchester bombing, as thousands defied the terror threat to take part in the city’s annual half running marathon.
British anti-terror police released photographs from security cameras showing Abedi on the night of the massacre, wearing jeans and trainers, a black bodywarmer and a baseball cap, with the straps of his backpack visible on his shoulders.
Police were busy raiding various addresses in the northwestern English city, arresting two men aged 25 and 19, bringing the number now detained on UK soil to 13. “The operation is still really at full-tilt in a way and so until the operation is complete we can’t be entirely sure that it’s closed.”
Reporters asked if some of Abedi’s network were still at large, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: “Potentially.” Manchester-born Abedi, of Libyan origin, injured more than 100 people when he detonated his explosive as concertgoers left a show by US teen idol Ariana Grande. A third of those killed were children.
Six days after 22-year-old Salman Abedi launched his attack on a pop concert, killing 22 people, a British minister said that members of the suicide bomber’s network could still be a large.
Meanwhile, authorities in Libya have detained Abedi’s brother and father, while British investigators appealed to the public late Saturday for details of the bomber’s movements in the days before the attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State group.