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London, May 24
Four more men were arrested in Manchester on Wednesday in connection with investigations into the suicide bombing at a concert in the city that killed 22 people as the government indicated that the Libyan-origin bomber may not have acted alone.
The new arrests came as the injured toll doubled from 59 to 119.
"Three men have been arrested after police executed warrants in south Manchester in connection with the ongoing investigation into Monday night's horrific attack at the Manchester Arena," a Greater Manchester Police statement said.
Another man was arrested in Wigan near Manchester, taking the total number of arrests to five.
A 23-year-old man arrested yesterday in the wake of the attack on Monday night, carried out by a bomber identified as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, has been confirmed as his brother Ismail Abedi.
Greater Manchester Police today said that they are investigating a network in connection with the bombing.
"I think it is very clear that this is a network that we are investigating," chief constable Ian Hopkins told reporters, confirming that an ongoing search by armed officers who used a controlled explosion at a block of flats in Manchester city centre was related to their investigations into such a network.
He also confirmed an off-duty police officer was among the 22 killed.
UK home secretary Amber Rudd said that Abedi was known to security services "up to a point" and it is believed that intelligence agencies had dug into his connections with al- Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) in his parents' homeland of Libya.
"It was a devastating occasion, it was more sophisticated than some of the attacks we've seen before, and it seems likely — possible — that he wasn't doing this on his own," Rudd said.
The home minister was speaking a day after the UK's terror threat level was raised to its highest of "critical", which indicates the security services believe more attacks may be imminent.
According to Rudd, up to 3,800 troops will be deployed on the streets around Britain as part of Operation Temperer after British Prime Minister Theresa May ordered to raise the country's terror threat level to "critical".
The suspect, Manchester-born Abedi, went to school locally and then studied business management at Salford University, before dropping out from the course.
He made several trips to Libya, where it is thought his immigrant parents had returned in 2011 following Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow.
Mohammed Saeed El-Saeiti, the imam at the Didsbury mosque where Abedi's brother Ismail had been a Quran teacher, branded the attacker as someone filled with hate.
"Salman showed me the face of hate after my speech on ISIS," he said.
The attack killed 22 people, all of whom have now been identified by police but their names will be released during the course of this week after formal identifications are complete.
The Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership said today that as many as 119 people had been injured in the attack, 64 of whom remain hospitalised, 20 of them critically.
The terror attack had already led to the UK's political parties suspending general election campaigning, with polling day just over two weeks away on June 8.
There has been growing speculation if the polls will be postponed as a result of the attack and the "critical" terror threat level. — PTI
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