Manchester attack police say they are investigating terror network

Source: The Guardian | May 24, 2017 | Matthew Weaver, Vikram Dodd , Josh Halliday and Haroon Siddique

Police chief confirms that an officer was among those killed but refuses to say whether he thinks a bomb maker is at large

Police say they are investigating a terror network over the Manchester concert attack that killed 22 people, but have refused to say whether the bomb maker is believed to be at large.

After his officers made three further arrests and raided several properties on Wednesday, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, Ian Hopkins, said: “I think it’s very clear that this is a network we are investigating.”

He refused to directly answer whether another person was believed to have created the bomb, or whether the police had discovered the “bomb factor”. Hopkins said instead that police were “carrying out extensive searches” in the city.

Hopkins also said that a police officer was among those killed, understood to be be a female officer with the Cheshire constabulary. She is believed to have been off duty and the BBC reported that her husband, who was with her at the time, was critically injured and their two children hurt.

“Very sadly, I can confirm that one of the officers was a serving police officer,” Hopkins said. He added that police believed they had now identified all 22 who were killed, and had informed their families.

The Greater Manchester force said on Wednesday they had arrested three men in south Manchester. The arrests came as troops were deployed on to the streets of the UK after the government raised the UK terrorist threat level to critical for the first time since July 2007.

A neighbour at a property in south Manchester identified one of the men detained as Adel Forjani, in his mid-40s, whose grown-up son was also taken away, he said. Omar al-Faqhuri said the family were from Libya and had lived in the house for 15 years. On Wednesday afternoon, officers raided a flat on Granby Row, in Manchester city centre.

On Tuesday, police arrested a 23-year-old man in Chorlton, near an address where the family of suspected bomber Salman Ramadan Abedi had previously lived. The home secretary, Amber Rudd, said it was likely Abedi had not acted alone.

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