4 days ago
The case for looking back in anger
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.
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.
