"…Many of the concert’s attendees were girls and young women, some clutching pink balloons, who had come to see one of the world’s biggest pop stars. After the explosion, many children were either separated from their parents or came unaccompanied and didn’t know where to go.
British counter-terrorism investigators think the possible terrorist attack may have been the work of a suicide bomber who entered a crowded area outside the performance space where attendees were streaming out of the concert, according to U.S. law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation…"
Not trying to blame the victims in any way but several concert goers have reported that bag checking was insipid to non-existant. Last time I went to a concert venue, it was a few months after the Orlando massacre and we were all wanded by someone of the same sex. Scary but necessary today. So sorry that this happened.
The reports I’ve heard are that the suicide bomber was outside the venue so his (or her) bag would not have been checked. But I’m sure we’ll learn more about this in upcoming days.
Ugh, I have an online running friend from Scotland, who actually came to the US a couple of years ago to meet us all (including MomofWildChild and me). She was due to go to a concert in that arena this coming weekend. She had young students who were at the arena this past weekend. She is devastated.
I have a good friend who lives just a few blocks from the arena. I immediately got on whatsapp to get ahold of him. He is fine, everyone he knows is fine. He’s a little in shock though, wondering why something like this would happen to what he considers a small, relatively insignificant town. (I’ve never been to Manchester- my family lives in southern England).
He said he heard the explosion but from where he was, it sounded like a faint car backfire and didn’t think anything of it.
I was sending him updates from our news because media there was being tight-lipped- which is normal for their media (unlike ours which reports every flimsy rumor).
I can’t read about the victims. They were children! How can someone do something like this, let alone to kids?! I really cannot even fathom what their families are going through.
My heart also goes out to Grande. I can’t imagine what she’s going through either. If it was me, I think I’d feel unreasonably, illogically guilty because these people had come to see me perform.
This is heartbreaking. It has been reported that some of the victims were injured due to trampling and not from the actual bomb. Unfortunately there is nothing that could’ve stopped this. It happened outside of the venue.
As far as preventing this, nothing would be able to do that 100%, as with the drugged out piece of filth who decided to run his car into crowds in Times Square (trying to commit suicide by cop apparently) shows. I can’t speak to this incident, but from the description the bomb was set off in the public concourse outside the arena exit and it was deliberate. What made this even worse is most of the people at the show were young kids, teens and younger, with parents,and that likely was deliberate, and I suspect he targeted the show because of the nature of the show, all that lurid dancing and such (and that is said with sarcasm, I guess compared to some medieval view of things, it is lurid).
Hopefully they will find those responsible and make them pay, and if it is ISIS they should go after ISIS positions with the intent of wiping out their leadership and inflicting maximum damage, but I doubt it. They likely will arrest some local schlubs and declare justice is done and pretend like everything is fine.
It is so sad. Of course I’m sending my son to England alone in two weeks so this scares me. He is staying with an older friend who lives outside London and grew up there, a very responsible young man. Still makes me sad.
The cold, hard fact is that little can be done to prevent this kind of attack. Whether or not he knew that there was npo bag check within the arena, he positioned himself at an exit, where logically thousands of people would be passing through sooner or later. Like Musicprnt said, society exclaims repulsion, denounce the perpetrators as cowards, declares that justice will be relentless, and then pretend that everything is fine.
Homeless men rushed in to help, probably arriving before the police and medical personnel. In the interview one man said he wasn’t able to sleep that night after seeing what he saw.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/23/europe/homeless-man-manchester-attack/index.html
“We are human, we still have a heart, we still have that instinct to help people out that need help and that’s what we are doing. And obviously when we are seeing children like that, with blood and, pulling nails out of their arms and stuff, and there were a couple in a girl’s face,” he said.
“It was children, a lot of children with blood all over them, crying and screaming. If I didn’t help, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself for walking away and leaving kids like that.”
Since my son decided to study abroad in London net Fall there have now been 2 violent attacks in the area. it does have me a bit worried for his safety.
Terrible situation, and sympathy for the victims.
When the last London attack happened a short while ago, my mom talked to her cousin over there ans they said they weren’t all that shaken up because they had lived through the IRA attacks.
Yes, when I was young there were the IRA, the Basque separatists, and some Italian group. One of my friends had been caught in an area where bullets were flying between Spanish police and the ETA.
BBC has small profiles of some of the victims. As expected there are young people among the dead as well as parents who were waiting outside to pick up their kids. One family lost both the parents. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40012738
The father and brother were arrested today in Libya, and it appears the brother was planning an attack in Tripoli. Very unusual for something like this to be a family affair involving two generations. So many of the Islamist terrorists seem to be misfits whose motivations include rebellion against conservative parents.