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What We Know About The Manchester Suicide Bomber Salman Ramadan Abedi

Swarajya StaffMay 24, 2017, 02:52 PM | Updated 02:52 PM IST
A man is stopped and searched by police as he walks in the city centre in Manchester, England. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

A man is stopped and searched by police as he walks in the city centre in Manchester, England. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)


The suicide bomber, who killed 22 people at the deadly Manchester Arena, has been identified as 22-year-old Salman Ramadan Abedi, Telegraph quoted Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins as saying.

Investigations are on to find out whether he acted on his own, as a 'Lone Wolf', or was part of a wider terror network.

Abedi was born in Manchester in 1994, the second youngest of four children. He went to school there and then attended Salford University before dropping out, and worked in a bakery, reported the BBC. His parents were Libyan refugees who came to the United Kingdom to escape the Muammar Gaddafi regime of Libya.

Both his parents were born in Libya, but they immigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester, where they have lived for at least 10 years. They had three sons and a daughter.

Abedi grew up in the Whalley Range area. This area was in the news in 2015 when twins and grade A pupils, Zahra and Salma Halane, who were both aspiring medical students, left their homes and moved to Islamic State-controlled Syria.

Abedi’s dangerous extremist tendencies were visible to Mohammed Saeed El-Saeiti, the imam at the Manchester Islamic Centre, also known as Didsbury Mosque, said a Telegraph report. "Salman showed me the face of hate after my speech on Isis [an acronym for the Islamic State group]," said the imam. "He used to show me the face of hate and I could tell this person does not like me. It's not a surprise to me."

There were unconfirmed reports in Manchester that the whole family, apart from the two elder sons, recently returned to Libya. Abedi had left the United Kingdom too, but was believed to have returned in the last few days.

With Inputs From ANI.

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