Celebrating on the Intenet and claiming responsibility for the May 22 suicide bombing massacre in Manchester, U.K, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] continues to wreak havoc around the globe. With mostly teenage girls and their mothers attending an Ariana Grande concert, an ISIS suicide-bomber struck outside Manchester Arena, just when concertgoers exited the building at 10:30 pm local time. Killing at least 22 and injuring more than 100, 22-year-old Salman Abedi detonated his suicide vest packed with screws, bolts and nails, spreading across the deadly blast radius, ripping through the flesh of children and teenagers. “It seems that bombs of British air force over children of Mosul and Raqqa have just come back to #Manchester,” said Abdul Haqq on Twitters. Raiding a house in Fallowfield, Manchester, British police arrested a 23-year-old accomplice last night.
ISIS finds itself in a battle for its survival in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria. U.S. Special Forces assist the Iraqi military in Mosul and Kurdish YPG Peshmerga fighters in Syria. As Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi’s caliphate falls apart, ISIS desperately appeals to lone-wolfs living in Europe, the U.K and United States. Attacks last year in France, Belgium and the U.S. claimed hundreds of lives, leaving Western democracies scrambling to find a needle-in-a-haystack. When an ISIS truck driver slammed his van into a popular oceanfront walk in Nice, France July 14, 2016, killing 87, injuring 432, ISIS switched its tactics using vehicles as lethal weapons. ISIS struck again Dec. 19, 2016 in Berlin, killing 12, injuring 56, showing more use of car-ramming to inflict maximum casualties. Yesterday’s Manchester Arena suicide bombing was more ominous with a local terrorist having suicide vests.
Unlike car rammings, suicide vests suggest active terror cells with local terrorists supplied bomb-making material and expertise. Raiding the Fallowfield neighborhood of South Manchester, local police detonated some type of explosive device, perhaps remnants of the suicide bomb factory. You can’t call the Manchester attacker a “lone wolf” because it took much more logistics and coordination to build a suicide belt, typically containing C-4 or TATP [Triacetone Triperoxide], packed with shrapnel screws, bolts, washers, nuts and nails. When the Boston Marathon bombers detonated press cooker bombs April 15, 2013, they killed 3, injuring 264, causing serious shrapnel injuries, including amputations. Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins confirmed that the suspect, Salman Abedi, planned the attack for months, attesting to how terror cells operate to commit mass murder.
ISIS propaganda praised the Manchester attack as “the beginning is in Brussels and Paris, and in London, we form a state,” insisting the attack proves the global reach of al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. “We hope the perpetrator is one of the soldiers in the caliphate,” read another ISIS sympathizer, attesting to the problem confronting Western democracies battling radical Islamic terrorism. British Prime Minister Theresa May called the mayhem “as an appalling terrorist attack,” reminding British voters why June 23, 2016 they voted to end membership in the European Union. EU policies pressured member states into taking more Mideast refugees fleeing war-torn Iraq and Syria. Yesterday’s Manchester blast only reinforces British voters that they did the right thing bailing out of the EU. May has a real problem tracking down active terror tells ready to strike again at innocent civilians.
When the blast happened at 10:30 pm last night, a stampede of concertgoers headed for the exits. Eyewitnesses saw bloody and lifeless bodies strewn over the outdoor foyer of Manchester Arena, permanently scaring the children and teenagers after experiencing their teen idol Ariana Grande. “Broken. Form the bottom of my heart, I am so, so sorry. I don’t have any words,” Grande Tweeted, canceling the remainder of her European tour in Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and France. While it’s true that terrorists win when free citizens change plans, it’s also true that terrorist attacks in soft targets, like the Manchester Arena, can’t be stopped. Terrorism experts have no answer how to stop terrorist threats in venues that don’t involve searches and metal detectors. No responsible pop star wants to assemble thousands of young concertgoers as prey for terrorist attacks.
Manchester police and British Secret Service have a lot of digging to do to uncover the terror cell responsible last night’s suicide bombing. Building suicide belts involves more than Internet instructions, requiring a supply-chain to provide the explosives and equipment necessary to build suicide vests. “Tonight, our hearts are broken,” read a statement from “Side-by-Side,” Grande’s management company “Words cannot express our sorrow for the victims and families harmed in this senseless attack. We mourn the lives of children and loved ones taken by the cowardly act,” echoing the thoughts of most elected officials around the globe. Fighting ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa, President Donald Trump spoke from Israel on his first foreign trip. “So many beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers,” Trump said, re-doubling U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS.
