Manchester - Police say an apparent suicide bomber set off an improvised explosive device at the end of a concert by US singer Ariana Grande in the English city of Manchester on Monday.
At least 22 people, including some children, were killed and 59 wounded when the suicide bomber struck as thousands of fans streamed out of the concert.
Chief Constable Ian Hopkins says forensic investigations are continuing to determine if the attacker had accomplices. He provided no information about the individual who detonated the device.
Police said the attacker died after detonating explosives
shortly after 10.33pm at Manchester Arena, which has
the capacity to hold 21 000 people. Children were among the
dead, police said.
"We believe, at this stage, the attack last night was
conducted by one man," Hopkins
told reporters. "The priority is to establish whether he was
acting alone or as part of a network.
"The attacker... died at the arena. We believe the attacker
was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated
causing this atrocity."
A witness who attended the concert said she felt a huge
blast as she was leaving the arena, followed by screaming and a
rush by thousands of people trying to escape the building.
A video posted on Twitter showed fans, many of them young,
screaming and running from the venue. Dozens of parents
frantically searched for their children, posting photos and
pleading for information on social media.
undefined"We were making our way out and when we were right by the
door there was a massive explosion and everybody was screaming,"
concert-goer Catherine Macfarlane told Reuters.
"It was a huge explosion - you could feel it in your chest.
It was chaotic. Everybody was running and screaming and just
trying to get out."
Ariana Grande, 23, later said on Twitter: "broken. from the
bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words."
Prime Minister Theresa May said the incident was being treated as a terrorist attack, making it the deadliest militant assault in Britain since four British Muslims killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London's transport system in July 2005.
May, who faces an election in two-and-a-half weeks, said her
thoughts were with the victims and their families. She and
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, agreed
to suspend campaigning ahead of the June 8 election.
"We are working to establish the full details of what is
being treated by the police as an appalling terrorist attack,"
May said in a statement. "All our thoughts are with the victims
and the families of those who have been affected."
May is due to hold a crisis response meeting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping sent his condolences over the
blast to Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Chinese state media
reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but US officials drew parallels to the coordinated attacks in November
2015 by Islamist militants on the Bataclan concert hall and
other sites in Paris, which claimed about 130 lives.
Islamic State supporters took to social media to celebrate
the blast and some encouraged similar attacks elsewhere.
Britain is on its second-highest alert level of "severe",
meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.
British counter-terrorism police have said they are making
on average an arrest every day in connection with suspected
terrorism.
In March, a British-born convert to Islam ploughed a car
into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge, killing four
people before stabbing to death a police officer who was on the
grounds of parliament. The man was shot dead at the scene.
In 2015, Pakistani student Abid Naseer was convicted in a
US court of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up the Arndale
shopping centre in the centre of Manchester in April 2009.
Manchester Arena, the largest indoor arena in Europe, opened
in 1995 and is a popular concert and sporting venue.
Desperate parents and friends used social media to search
for loved ones who attended Monday's concert while the wounded
were being treated at six hospitals across Manchester.
"Everyone pls share this, my little sister Emma was at the
Ari concert tonight in #Manchester and she isn't answering her
phone, pls help me," said one message posted alongside a picture
of a blonde girl with flowers in her hair.
Paula Robinson, 48, from West Dalton about 40 miles east of
Manchester, said she was at the train station next to the arena
with her husband when she felt the explosion and saw dozens of
teenage girls screaming and running away from arena.
"We ran out," Robinson told Reuters. "It was literally
seconds after the explosion. I got the teens to run with me."
Robinson took dozens of teenage girls to the nearby Holiday
Inn Express hotel and tweeted out her phone number to worried
parents, telling them to meet her there. She said her phone had
not stopped ringing since her tweet.
"Parents were frantic running about trying to get to their
children," she said. "There were lots of lots children at
Holiday Inn."