According to Bloomberg, fifty people were injured in the blast, Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said in a televised statement. The incident happened Monday night outside the 21,000-seat Manchester Arena after a concert by Ariana Grande, a 23 year-old U.S. singer popular with teenagers and children. No one has claimed responsibility.
Latest statement on incident at Manchester Arena pic.twitter.com/BEpLOan3dY
— G M Police (@gmpolice) May 23, 2017
“We are currently treating this as a terrorist incident until we have further information,” Hopkins said. “We are working closely with national counter-terrorism policing networks and U.K. intelligence partners.”
The blast happened in the middle of an election campaign, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party saying it will suspend all activities on Tuesday. It’s the latest in a series of attacks that have traumatized Europe since 2015 and comes just two months after a lone assailant left five people dead outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
“We are working to establish the full details of what is being treated by the police as an appalling terrorist attack,” May said in an emailed statement. “All our thoughts are with the victims and the families of those who have been affected.”
The premier will chair a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee, which brings together ministers and security officials, at 9 a.m. in London.
‘Lot of Smoke’
Witnesses told Sky News they heard a loud bang at the end of the performance.
“The concert had finished and we were all leaving and there was an explosion to our left and people started running,” television actress Isabel Hodgins, who was at the show, told Sky. “It smelled of burning and there was quite a lot of smoke as we were leaving.”
The incident evoked memories of the attack in 2015 on the Bataclan concert venue in Paris, where gunmen mowed down rock fans. The concert-goers in Manchester were even younger, with some witnesses telling U.K. media that children as young as nine were at the event.
One witness told the BBC that parents were standing on walls screaming for their children after the blast. Hotels in the city took in children while attempts were made to trace their families.
Pictures of missing teens were posted on social media by friends and relatives trying to trace them. The injured were being treated in six hospitals across Greater Manchester, Hopkins said.
Some concert-goers said at first they thought the explosion was caused by one of the pink balloons decorating the hall. Television footage showed scenes of panic as people scrambled to leave the site.
The Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the situation and told U.S. citizens in the area to take direction from local authorities. "At this time we have no information to indicate a specific credible threat involving music venues in the United States,” it said in a statement.