Manchester attack exposed chinks in UK armour

Drowned in the deluge of condemnations and outpourings of grief following the terror attack in Manchester, is a serious security lapse. Britain, which took pride in its watertight anti-terror arrangements, has been caught napping.

The 22-year-old terrorist, Salman Abedi, could slip past the security apparatus to plant a home-made bomb at a convenient location to inflict heavy collateral damage — a euphemism for the death toll. Twenty two people, mostly children and teenagers, lost their lives and 59 were wounded in the Manchester concert attack because a bloodthirsty ISIS operative wanted revenge.

The police now seem to have gathered information about the young man who had returned from Libya this week. What seems baffling is how the government and its law-enforcers could afford to be lax when west Europe has been scarred by a series of attacks, big and small, in the last couple of years.

The terror groups — having realised that a co-ordinated full-fledged frontal assault being virtually impossible in a heightened security atmosphere — have now taken to recruiting lone wolves. The Brussels bombing, the Bastille Day attack in France, to name a couple, conform to this pattern of subterfuge. UK could witness yet another attack in quick succession now that the chinks in the armour are exposed.

Terror-peddlers waited 12 years after the London bombings on July 7, 2005, to strike and, sadly, they have drawn blood yet again.