Manchester Attack: Terror at the Arena Panorama

attack on teenagers and live music finds its place in the city again.

50,000 turn out for the home town band.

And you'll never prevail and not against us, because this is our

Manchester... Our Manchester... And the bees still buzz... .

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE The ultimate show of strength, you

can hear it and see it. Resilience and solidarity can't be

the only response to the worst attack this city has seen. But right

now it's what they need. People's passion, isn't it, music? And if

people are scared to go out and listen to music, that is not right.

It's not right, so, this act of defiance will be, hopefully, quite

inspiring for us as well as them. It is now a week since thousands of

young girls were looking forward to another concert. American superstar

Ariana Grande. Ariana Grande. She is like an actor

on like my two favourite TV shows and she's got a really good voice.

Ten-year-old Poppy Cousins had a ticket. Sisters Hannah Safiyya and

Sumayya were taken to the concert by their older brother, Gibran. The

morning that the tickets were released, they pestered me the night

before to make sure I could be on the computer at 9 to purchase the

tickets. The Manchester Arena was packed with

more than 20,000 fans. Suzanne Browning was with her

daughter, Phoebe. It was really a happy atmosphere.

There was people with children, from two years old, toddlers on their

parent's shoulders. Five-year-old girls in rara dresses. Teenage girls

looking like they were on their first night out. It was mums and

kids that were there. It was Daisy Porter's first gig. She

was there with her parents, Gareth and Sarah, who has motor neurone

disease. She was mesmerised. She said to me, she said, I want to go

to a concert every week, dad. I definitely want to go to a concert

every week. I love it. Didn't she? Every song that came on, I was

taking videos as a memory so when I came home I could have a bit of the

concert with me. Just after 10.30pm, minutes after

Ariana Grande had left the stage, the innocence of a generation was

shattered. Oh, my God! What's going on? What

just happened? A bomb had been detonated in the foyer of the arena.

Oh, my God! The sound just came out of nowhere. Everyone stopped for a

split second trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly people

were screaming, running to the nearest exit.

The Porter family were already at the exit. They were caught up in the

blast. I was looking to the centre, to the right of the actual foyer

part. I just saw bang - just, it lit up. The heat in your face, bang. It

come from nowhere. The next thing, just stuff came

flying out through the doors. Thought, oh, my God, it's a suicide

bomber, straightaway. I just looked down. I was thinking, what's that on

the floor? It... And then I realised there was an arm attached to it.

So, I grabbed Sarah and Daisy. Threw her back, said, run, run.

Families being separated, friends being separated from each other.

Some parents even handing their children over the railing so their

children could escape. I wasn't really sure what it was. It

was not knowing what it was that scared me.

My daughter ran off in the opposite direction. She started running

because she thought it was a terrorist attack and she thought

there was going to be shooters. That hadn't entered my head. This is what

kids see these days. I grabbed both my sisters and I

thought, probably not a good idea to run to an exit. I saw people being

separated. I didn't want that to happen to us. I just thought people

will come in shooting. I thought, well, if that is the case, I want to

get into the stadium part. At least if I go in there I've got a fighting

chance to hide. Poppy and her dad, Jamie, had left

moments before the bomb went off and were in a lift.

The lift wasn't moving, which, as a parent, you know, you're stuck in a

lift with your ten-year-old child. Conscious that there's something not

quite right. We saw an exit, which none was really using. So, we ran

towards there. And ran down the stairwell. Came out.

Suzanne had been separated from her daughter, Phoebe.

I was crying. I couldn't get my breath. I didn't know where she was.

I had seen people covered in blood. Didn't have a clue where my daughter

was. Couldn't get her on the phone. It is indescipable.

Paddy Ennis was the first paramedic on the scene. It was surreal. It was

almost like walking into a film set. It didn't seem real. There were

people everywhere. People were shouting and screaming and injured.

It was very immediately apparent there were an awful lot of people

that were very seriously injured. It was almost immediately apparent that

there were a lot of people beyond any help.

Jamie and Poppy managed to get out of the lift. It was a real strong

sense of burning, like the smell on bonfire night.

I didn't know if I was going to get hit or like we wouldn't have been

able to get out, and people were collapsing. People were like

screaming. And I was just really scared.

There were white T-shirts being used for bandages. People were covering

people with them. It was only, it was only some time into the incident

I realised they were the Ariana Grande T-shirts.

It just struck me, my nine-year-old is an Ariana Grande fan. I realised

how many young people had been at this incident and were involved in

this, you know, in front of me. Gareth, Sarah and Daisy were helped

out of the building by security. There was kids there with people,

can't find me mum, can't find me mum. And just on its own, because

it's a concert, isn't it? It's for kids. I mean, young kids.

I just remember suddenly being aware of phones ringing. All over. Ringing

and vibrating. And then it was at that point I realised my own phone

had been ringing for probably an hour and it was my wife, desperately

wanting to know if I was OK. Suzanne and Phoebe were eventually

reunited. We just hugged each other for about ten minutes and we were

sobbing our hearts out. I think that I won't feel as safe any more

outside. Because if it could happen in like an arena on a normal school

day, it could happen anywhere, any time. It's just, I don't feel safe.

If we were a second or two earlier, or a metre in front, we would have

been in that foyer, wouldn't we? We would have been in there with that

blast and we probably wouldn't be here today.

22 people died at the Manchester Arena on May 22nd. The youngest was

eight years old. 116 people were injured.

Hours after the suicide attack, police started raiding addresses

across Greater Manchester. This house in Fallowfield was one of

the first. Home to the bomber, 22-year-old Salman Abedi. This is

him caught on CCTV on his way to the arena. Abedi was born on New Year's

Eve in Manchester in 1994, to Libyan parents. The second son of six

children, four boys and two girls. Schooled in the city, he went to

mosques in the city, grew up in the city. Those who knew him can't

believe Abedi carried out the attack.

This guy didn't seem like he had the ability to do anything like that. He

didn't seem to be the type of person to be that involved, that engaged.

One of Abedi's oldest friends agreed to speak to us anonymously.

I've known him for about 20 years. I've known him and his family. As

far as I can remember, I've known him. His words are spoken by an

actor. It still doesn't seem to make sense

that someone would just walk into a crowd of people and just blow

himself up. And that's someone I know. That's someone I had trusted.

Abedi's father, Ramadan, a security officer in Libya, and his mother

Samia came to Britain to escape the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.

In the 90s, a lot of people came as refugees, escaping the tyranny of

Colonel Gaddafi. And including the family of this terrorist. They came

fleeing Gaddafi's terror. And they were welcomed by Manchester and by

British society. And this is the sadness of it, is that one of his

children does this. Abedi was a pupil at Burnage Academy

for Boys, the local comprehensive. He had a reputation as a

troublemaker and a loner. His friend was at a different

school, but they kept in touch. He constantly got involved into fights

and quite a few times he's been to hospital with broken limbs. Started

taking a lot of weed, and that kind of brought him a different crowd.

That crowd - gangs. Abedi became a familiar face in

areas known for gang violence and mixed with people linked to gangs

and drugs. He had a reputation for drinking and smoking cannabis. One

girl we spoke to also remembers Abedi cycling around reading aloud

from the Koran. When Abedi turned 16, he left Manchester for Libya. He

and his brothers Hashem and Ismail joined their father, who was

fighting to overthrow Gaddafi. He told me in 2011 he went back to

Libya and received some training. He said in the mountainous region, I'm

not sure if he was ever involved in fighting, but he just said weapons

training. But was it more than training? We

understand the brothers and their father joined rebel fighters.

I think what happened during the uprising against Gaddafi was that

many young people from Libyan origin living in the UK found a sense of

identity in the revolution. They found that they are Libyans and it

was a good time to be a Libyan. That's me. We were there chasing

Gaddafi's fighters. There were vicious fights, it was scary

sometimes. Many British Libyans took part in

the fighting. Akram Ramadan, also from Manchester, says he met Abedi's

father during the war. I made some enquiries to find out where the

fighters are and whether front line is and was driven to a city where

they said this is where the foreign fighters come. I went there to see

if anybody I knew was there and one of the first people I met was

Ramadan. I saw him bearing arms after Tripoli had been liberated,

the last hotspot for Gaddafi's troops and his son was in their and

there was fierce battles in that city.

We'd all been fearless fighters, we all fought for life.

The British government wanted Gaddafi gone as well. And did little

to stop fighters travelling. But did they plan for their return? They

know there is a lot of Libyan fighters there, they should have

planned ahead and thought, if these kids are coming back, I think they

need some psychological looking into.

The fighting over, Gaddafi dead, Samantha Abedi return to Manchester.

-- Salman Abedi. Libyan sources told us Salman Abedi return to fight

again in 2014, this time with an Islamist militia called Omar Mukhtar

Brigade. They say he was fighting alongside the son of a radical

preacher who knew the father. Was this another important step on his

path to murder? A year later, Abedi was studying for a degree in

business and management at the University of Salford. Abedi had

changed. He spoke that he regretted wasting

time with his education, hanging out with the wrong crowd. He felt like

he needed to re-establish or rekindle a relationship between

himself and God. So he was praying more and trying to cut out smoking.

He was trying to memorise whatever he could from the Koran. Nasser Ali

became friends with his father, Ramadan, Manchester, but they fell

out after the 2011 Libyan uprising, over comments Ramadan posted online.

Ramadan had a Facebook page, using the name Yousef Hannaa. He expressed

support for notorious al-Qaeda fighter and called for victory over

nonbelievers. What he said in his book is unbelievable. It's just

that, you know? You wrote it by himself, nobody forced him to write

it, it's there. Also on the father's Facebook page, this photo of Salman

Abedi's younger brother, Hashem. The caption, Hashem, the line in

training. Salman's father, I would say he has jihadist view. It is

clear if you see his book, it is clear what he has written in his

book, very clear. I expect his kid will be similar, same, because if

you see the father's values and opinions, it's normal, it's

acceptable, it's not that impossible, you know? The sun would

carry the same values, and then he would be like the father. After his

son bombed the arena, Ramadan Abedi gave an interview in Libya. He

denied he nor his son supported any militant groups.

Two days after the arena attack, police raided this block of flats in

North Manchester. It was believed to be Abedi's bomb factory. His

landlord reportedly contacted police after seeing the bomber's name in

the media. He said the flat stomach of chemicals. A neighbour told us

they had lots of banging and the TV was on night. -- he said the flat

was smelling of chemicals. The sophistication of the device, what

we are hearing from the 30s is it is at a level where he would almost

certainly have required help. As yet we don't know whether he himself

created this device. Either way, a bomb of this level of sophistication

would have taken a matter of at least weeks if not months to have

prepared the explosive. Abedi lived here in Fallowfield, South

Manchester. This footage is said to be of him putting out his bins. It's

a neighbourhood with notorious connections. He is believed to have

had contact with the number of Islamist extremists from this same

area. They include Abd al-Baset Azzouz, the bomb maker accused of

running an al-Qaeda network in Libya and Raphael Hostey, the recruiter

for so-called Islamic State, believed to have been killed in

Syria in 2016. The authorities have told us that

Abedi new Raphael Hostey, the 20-year-old student, when he died a

few years ago in Syria, fighting for Islamic State. Raphael Hostey is

believed to have attended Didsbury as Abedi did.

The family was very involved in Didsbury Mosque. The father, he used

a call to prayer is there and the brother used to lead some of the

prayers there as well. When I heard Didsbury Mosque was mentioned, and

that's when my heart dropped. We are what we say, normal people, so we

have never faced anything like this. Mr Haffar said he hadn't heard of

Salman Abedi until last week. He faced the world's press to condemn

the attack by a worshipper at the mosque.

The horrific atrocity that occurred in Manchester on Monday night has

shocked us all. It has indeed shocked us all.

Eventually, when we did find out that he attended this mosque we had

to really ask some of our employees whether they remember him and some

of them did say they remembered him. What I was told, and I quote, he was

a loner. He would sometimes sit in a corner, going through his computer,

reading some books. One of the mosques imams had some

concerns about Abedi but did not report them to the police. So did

they do enough? We have to learn a lot. I have to be truthful, we have

to learn, we have to be more conscious, we have to have proper

policies. We have to avoid mistakes. I think we have to ask our imams to

be more proactive, to encourage the youth to move away from such evil,

evil stories, evil people. But others did report Abedi to the

authorities. A community worker said while Abedi with a college in his

teens, teachers and pupils were so worried they called on anti-terror

hotline a number of times. He'd been saying it was worth dying for a

cause and that suicide bombing was OK.

Those reports would have gone to the security services and Greater

Manchester Police. Part of the challenge all the time that the

police and MI5 face is you have a huge number of potential targets.

They have to be rated against the threat that they are perceived

against, and often there's difficult decisions to be made to say, if we

are going to do this new operation, we have to stop doing this other

one. That is the day-to-day conversation, literally every single

day if not every single hour, that goes on in the counterterrorism

network. MI5 says it will hold an inquiry into the way it dealt with

enquiries from the public that Abedi was a potential threat.

On the 17th of May, five days before the attack Manchester Arena, Salman

Abedi left Libya for the last time and flew into the UK via Turkey and

Germany. I think the one aspect of this case

which probably would concern me is this whole issue about people being

able to move between our country and war zones like Libya, and the fact

that people travelling from places like Turkey and Libya are obviously

at a crisscross in various hub airports to end up back in London or

Manchester and what are the capabilities of our system to manage

and control that. It's believed Abedi made his final

preparations in this rented flat in the centre of Manchester.

Libyan authorities say the bomber called his mother on the night of

the attack. The day after the bombing, his older

brother Ismail was arrested in Manchester. His younger brother

Hashem and his father Ramadan Abedi and held by Libyan authorities in

Tripoli. 14 people are now in custody here in the UK, in

connection with the attack. The huge operation to catch the suspected

network behind the bomber continues. The targeting of young girls leaving

a pop concert has deepened our anxieties. There's a call for

greater scrutiny of counterterrorism efforts, and renewed concerns about

community tensions. Feelings are running high at the

moment, so in those situations, of course, there are increased

tensions. But what I would say to people is, if you go down that path,

you are playing the game that the terrorists wanted you to play,

that's what they want. They want that clash between different

communities. I felt slightly wary the following

day that some people might be looking at me suspiciously, maybe

that's just me being paranoid or whatever, but I fit the description

in terms I'm male, Muslim and in my 20s. I'm a victim one night and then

the following day, lots of people are looking at me as if I may

suspect. -- as if I may suspect. The Muslim that works in your corner

shop has nothing to do with what this guy carried out. He hates this

attack just as much as you do and I hate this just as much as anyone out

there does. You're worried about Daisy, yeah.

She says when she closed her eyes the other night she said, I see

things. And even though we try to deter her, we tried to tell her it

was bins exploding, she has seen it and it was horrific. You wouldn't

want anyone to see that, would you? I think that my colleagues did an

absolutely amazing job. I just looked back, I feel proud to have,

to have been any part of that. And proud have been... To... Just...

Sorry. # And so Sally can wait

# She knows it's too late # As she's walking on by...#

The people of Manchester have shown even in their darkest hour they have

found their voice and strength of character. This is a city that has

come together in its grief and showed the spirit of its youth won't

be broken.