Manchester Victoria Rail Station Reopens After Suicide Attack

LONDON (AP) — The railway station next to Manchester Arena reopened Tuesday, more than a week after an attacker detonated a bomb in a crowd leaving a concert, killing 22 and injuring dozens.

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling were among those who laid wreaths at Victoria station, which also suffered damage in the blast.

Burnham said the city had pulled together “through what has been our darkest week.”

The return to a level of normalcy followed an emotional tribute Monday to attack victims. Hundreds stood in quiet contemplation at St Ann’s Square, where a sea of cards, flowers and balloons has grown in an impromptu memorial site for those killed and injured in the blast.

Police are trying to re-create attacker Salman Abedi’s movements before he detonated a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert.

Fourteen men have been arrested, most in and around Manchester, and police have scoured more than a dozen properties as investigators piece together the network around Abedi, a 22-year-old Briton of Libyan descent. He died when the bomb he was carrying in a knapsack exploded among the concert crowds.

British officials are under pressure to explain how Abedi was able to carry out his plot undetected. The government has said he was one of thousands of people peripherally on intelligence agencies’ radar but was not a focus of surveillance.

Manchester’s police chief said Tuesday that Abedi had come to police attention for “some relatively minor matters” including theft, receiving stolen goods and assault. But Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said Abedi had not been known to the government’s counter-radicalization program, known as Prevent.

Hopkins said he was not aware of what intelligence agencies knew about Abedi.