A suicide-bomber murders 22 at a pop concert in Britain

AT LEAST 22 people have been murdered and more than 50 injured in a suicide-bomb attack in Manchester. Police said that a lone male attacker detonated an improvised explosive device at about 10.30pm on May 22nd inside the Manchester Arena. The target was a concert by Ariana Grande, an American singer popular among young teenagers. Children are reportedly among the dead.

The bomb went off in the foyer of the venue. Eyewitnesses described people with shrapnel injuries, and nuts and bolts cast across the floor. Footage from inside the building shows people fleeing in terror from the arena, which is Britain’s largest indoor venue, with a capacity of 21,000. Police are still investigating whether the killer was part of a wider network. They have deployed more than 400 police around Manchester, Britain’s third-largest city. Britain’s political parties have suspended campaigning ahead of the general election due on June 8th.

The terrorist attack is Britain’s worst since the London bombings of 2005, in which four suicide-bombers killed 52 people on the Tube and bus networks. It comes two decades after a truck bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army destroyed several buildings in central Manchester, in an attack that caused no deaths but injured more than 200 people.