Last week marked the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing – the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil since the 7/7 London bombings. Twenty-two people were murdered, most of them children and teenagers, at a pop concert targeted with deliberate cruelty. Among them was Saffie-Rose Roussos, just eight years old – the youngest known victim of terrorism in UK history. It was the first time a jihadist attack in Britain had deliberately targeted a music venue, the first of its scale in Northern England, and the deadliest ever on a civilian crowd in that region.
Our love, we’re told, must be stronger than their hate. But I believe, deeply, that this is part of the problem
The attacker used a homemade nail bomb – built to kill, but also to maim and disfigure. While such weapons had been used before in Britain, including by far-right extremists in the 1999 Soho bombing, this marked the first time an Islamist terrorist deployed one in a UK mass-casualty attack.
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