EXCLUSIVE: In May 2017, I was standing outside the Manchester Arena just half an hour after a terrorist killed 22 people. Now terror has struck my city again.
Heaton Park synagogue’s Rabbi Daniel Walker (Image: Getty)
In May 2017, I stood outside the Manchester Arena as emergency vehicle lights and sirens pierced the night, and frightened, bloodied victims were being treated after a suicide blast killed 22 innocent people. Now, just over eight years later, I was standing by another police cordon in the resolute north-west city, surrounded by more shocked victims, after Thursday morning’s evil Yom Kippur terror attack at the Heaton Park synagogue.
ISIS-inspired suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, hoped his cold-blooded explosion at an Ariana Grande pop concert would tear apart Manchester’s shattered diverse community and fuel religious disharmony and hate. But hate lost. Instead, the nation grieved with us, the city came together, and all faiths united in horror and anger at twisted Abedi’s mindless actions.
The worker bee logo – showing the collective, hive feeling spreading across the former industrial, cotton mill city – started to appear everywhere. Manchester united.
And on Thursday afternoon, as I stood with my hand covering my face near the scene of the multiple fatal stabbing, one thing shocked me. One man’s words to me gave me a glimmer of hope amid this new darkness: “Manchester will do what Manchester does and pull together. Hate will never win.”
While one local resident, Bethany, added: “Hatred is just not welcome here.”
There was genuine fear and terror when I arrived on Middleton Road by the police cordon after the morning’s attack on what should have been a day of peace and celebration for Manchester’s Jewish community.
Already – amid recent heightened Middle-East tensions – this popular local synagogue, like most across the UK, was being protected by teams of heroic CST (Community Security Trust) volunteers.
Jewish worshippers were scheduled to gather around the time of the attack for a prayer service to mark Yom Kippur. But the security proves terror was never fully out of their minds.
But at 9.31am, a car drove indiscriminately towards worshippers before a man armed with a knife launched himself out of the car to continue the attack with what appeared to be an explosive device strapped to his waist before he was shot by armed officers.
Glade of Light memorial in Manchester remembers the Arena victims from 2017 (Image: Getty)
Hours later, amid the carnage and chaos, many people were still too traumatised to talk.
Some dressed in white were unable to talk to me on my video camera for religious reasons, as it’s such a key day in their religious calendar.
But the sheer number of CST staff patrolling the scene, sprinkled among a large number of Greater Manchester Police officers and with an SAS helicopter circling over our heads, is a stark reminder of the social tragedy that terror has yet again returned to the UK – and all our towns and cities need to unite now more than ever before.
