02 June, 2017
Police scrambled to close down a network around the Manchester suicide bomber with arrests in Britain and Tripoli on Wednesday, as details about the investigation were leaked to United States media, infuriating authorities who fear a second attack is imminent, reports Reuters.
In further developments, a barber shop in Manchester was raided with one theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide - a chemical used in the hairdressing industry but which can also be used to construct bombs - from the salon.
Now eight people are being held by police following the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert.
Britain's terror threat assessment has been hiked to "critical", the highest level, meaning an attack is considered imminent. Army and armed police officers patrolled major sites across the country.
It comes as a ninth man has been arrested over the terror attack on Monday.
"The arrest is connected to Monday's attack on the Manchester Arena but this is a fast moving investigation and we are keeping an open mind at this stage", Manchester police said in a statement shared on Twitter.
Hashem had been "under surveillance for a month and a half" and "investigation teams supplied intelligence that he was planning a terrorist attack in the capital Tripoli", the Deterrence Force said on its Facebook page. Abedi's father and two brothers have also been arrested in Britain and in Libya.
British police have now resumed intelligence-sharing with their U.S. counterparts after a brief suspension over a series of leaks by American officials to journalists providing details of the Manchester bomb investigation.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to raise the issue of the leaks with President Donald Trump in Brussels later.
Nine people are being held by police following the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert, including a man arrested on Friday evening. He was picked up while allegedly receiving a money transfer from Salman Abedi. Campaigning will resume on Friday.
Trump wants to "persuade North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members to step up and fully meet their obligations under burden sharing the 2 percent of GDP is a target they all agreed to", Tillerson told reporters. They said they would formally name the victims after forensic post-mortems, which would take four or five days. The explosion killed 22, including children, and wounded 64 other people.
France, which has repeatedly been hit by devastating militant attacks since 2015, extended emergency powers.
