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Updated 29 May, 2017 09:56am

Fresh arrest in Manchester attack

LONDON: British police made another arrest and stormed another house on Sunday as they hunted for suspects in the Manchester bombing, while a government minister said members of attacker Salman Abedi’s network may still be at large.

Greater Manchester Police said a 25-year-old man was arrested in the city on suspicion of terrorist offences. Eleven other men between the ages of 18 and 44 also are in custody.

Armed officers and police dogs took part in the raid on a house in Moss Side, a working-class area of south Manchester.

Most of the searches and arrests since Monday night’s bombing have been in multi-ethnic south Man­chester, where Abedi the son of Libyan parents was born and raised.

Police say that 1,000 people are working on the investigation, trying to track down Abedi’s accomplices and piece together his movements in the days before he detonated a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert.

Abedi died in the blast. Investigators say they have dismantled a large part of his network, but expect to make more arrests.

“The operation is still at full tilt,” Home Secretary Amber Rudd said, adding that some suspects could remain at large. “Until the operation is complete, we can’t be entirely sure that it is closed,” she said.

British police now have 12 suspects in custody including Abedi’s elder brother Ismail and have searched properties across the northwest England city. Another brother and Abedi’s father have been detained in Libya.

Police have released surveillance-camera images of Abedi on the night of the attack that show him dressed in sneakers, jeans, a dark jacket and a baseball cap. The straps of a backpack are visible on his shoulders.

Authorities are appealing for more information about his final days.

They say he returned to Britain from Libya on May 18, and likely completed assembling his bomb at a rented apartment in central Manchester.

The government is facing criticism after acknowledging that Abedi was on security services’ radar, but wasn’t a major focus of scrutiny.

Rudd said on Sunday that intelligence agencies were monitoring 3,000 suspected extremists and had a wider pool of 20,000 people of interest. “I would not rush to conclusions ... that they have somehow missed something,” Rudd said.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017

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