Updated 3pm
RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE warned citizens against visiting Britain after London raised its threat level in the wake of the Manchester suicide attack.
“The Russian embassy in Great Britain recommends Russian citizens refrain from travelling to the country, especially from visiting major cities, if such trips are not absolutely necessary,” Russia’s state tourism agency said in a statement.
“This is due to the fact that the government of Great Britain has raised the level of the terrorist threat in the country to the maximum possible,” it said.
The agency called on Russians to “take the warnings as seriously as possible” and ordered tour operators to inform their clients about the threat level in the UK.
British police are currently hunting for a jihadist network believed to behind the deadly bombing of in Manchester that killed 22 people.
Searches and arrests
In total, ten people have been arrested by police as part of their investigation. They include:
All except the 34-year-old woman and the 16-year-old boy remain in custody today.
Greater Manchester Police earlier searched an address in Moss Side in connection with the attack and another in the St Helen’s area of Merseyside.
One of the men in custody is believed to be Ismail Abedi, the brother of the bomber, Salman Abedi.
In a series of statements this morning, Greater Manchester Police has been keen to stress that they are working on a “fast-moving investigation and [they] are keeping an open mind at this stage”.
The MI5 domestic security service is managing around 500 active investigations, involving some 3,000 “subjects of interest”, the senior government ministry source said.
“Abedi was one of a larger pool of former SOIs whose risk remained subject to review by MI5 and its partners,” he said.
Abedi
University dropout Abedi, 22, grew up in a Libyan family that reportedly fled to Manchester to escape the now-fallen regime of Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
His father Ramadan and younger brother Hashem have been detained in Libya, with officials there saying the brother was aware of the planned attack.
They said both brothers belonged to the Islamic State group, while the father once belonged to a now-disbanded militant group with alleged ties to Al-Qaeda.
Libya said it was working closely with Britain to identify possible “terrorist networks” involved.
Libyan officials said Abedi’s brother Hashem had been under surveillance for six weeks and that investigators had information he was planning “a terrorist attack” in Tripoli.
A relative told AFP that Abedi had travelled to Manchester from Libya four days before the bombing.
German police said he made a brief stopover at Duesseldorf airport, while a Turkish official said he had transited through Istanbul airport without saying where he was travelling from.
With reporting from AFP - © – AFP, 2017 and Michelle Hennessy.
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