Police investigating the Manchester Arena bomb attack have stopped sharing information with the US after leaks to the media.

UK officials were outraged when photos appearing to show debris from the attack appeared in the New York Times. It came after the name of bomber Salman Abedi was leaked to US media just hours after the attack, which killed 22 – including children – and injured 64.

Theresa May is to raise concerns with Donald Trump at a Nato meeting later.

Greater Manchester Police hopes to resume normal intelligence relationships – a two-way flow of information – soon but is currently “furious”.

The force – which is leading the investigation on the ground – gives its information to National Counter-Terrorism, which then shares it across government and – because of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement – with the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

In total eight men are now in custody following the attack, carried out by Manchester-born Abedi, a 22-year-old from a family of Libyan origin.

It has also emerged two people who had known Abedi at college made separate calls to a hotline to warn the police about his extremist views.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd had said she was “irritated” by the disclosure of Abedi’s identity against the UK’s wishes and had warned Washington “it should not happen again”.
However, the pictures of debris – which appear to show bloodstained fragments from the bomb and the backpack used to conceal it – were subsequently leaked to the New York Times, prompting an angry response from within Whitehall and from UK police chiefs.

The police decision to stop sharing information specifically about the Manchester attack with their security counterparts in the US is a hugely significant move and shows how angry British authorities are.

The information from the crime scene wasn’t shared on a whim: the British and Americans have a lot of shared world-leading expertise in improvised explosive devices and scientists would be discussing whether the Manchester device tells them something new that could, ultimately, track down a bomb-maker.

Other sharing will continue. The UK and US share a vast amount of information about terror and espionage threats – its a tight-knit network that also encompasses Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

That system is based on trust and the “control principle”: if a piece of intelligence is shared, the receiving nation has no right to further disseminate it without permission.

The UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council described the “unauthorised disclosure” as a breach of trust which had potentially undermined a “major counter-terrorism investigation”.
Counter-terrorism detectives have spoken in the past about how a delay of about 36 hours before the public know who is being investigated can allow known associates of the suspect to be arrested without being tipped off.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said the leaks had worried him “greatly”, and he had raised them with the US ambassador.

Lord Blair, who was the head of the Metropolitan Police at the time of the bombings in London on 7 July 2005 said intelligence leaks by the US were not new. “I’m afraid it just reminds me exactly of what happened after 7/7 when the US published a complete picture of the way the bombs in 7/7 had been made up,” he said. “It’s a different world in which the US operate in terms of how they publish things and this is a very grievous breach but I’m afraid it’s the same as before.”

In Other Developments:

Two men were arrested following a search of an address in the Withington area of Greater Manchester on Thursday morning, taking the number of people held to eight
The government has announced a minute’s silence will be held at 11:00 BST in remembrance of those who lost their lives or were affected by the attack
The Conservatives and Labour are to resume local general election campaigning on Thursday, and national campaigning on Friday
Manchester United fans observed a minute’s silence in memory of the victims of Monday’s bombing, ahead of the team’s Europa League final win

Eight men and one woman have been arrested in the UK since Monday night, including Abedi’s older brother Ismail, 23. The woman has since been released. Abedi’s younger brother Hashem, 20, was held by special forces linked to the interior ministry in the Libyan capital Tripoli, as was their father.

Speaking on Wednesday, Greater Manchester Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said: “It’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigating. “And as I’ve said, it continues at a pace. There’s extensive investigations going on and activity taking place across Greater Manchester.”

As part of their investigation, police raided a block of flats near Manchester Piccadilly station in the city centre, requiring them to carry out a controlled explosion and briefly close the railway line.

Police carried out another controlled explosion in the early hours of Thursday morning at an address in the Moss Side area of Manchester.
Anyone with information can call the anti-terror hotline on 0800 789321.