Salman Abedi: What we know about the 22-year old Manchester attack bomber

The attack at Ariana Grade's concert saw 22 people dead and several injured

Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people in an attack in a pop concert in Manchester, was a business student who dropped out of university.

Various media reports said he was known to the security services and had turned to radical Islam in recent years.

He was named by police and Prime Minister Theresa May the day after the deadly attack, which also left dozens wounded, on the concert by US pop star Ariana Grande, who has a large teenage girl following.

The powerful homemade bomb was set off by Abedi at the concert was the deadliest terror attack in Britain since the 2005 London bombings.

Upbringing
 

Abedi was born in Manchester in 1994, the second youngest of four children. His parents were Libyan refugees who came to the United Kingdom to escape the Muammar Gaddafi regime of Libya.

Around 16,000 Libyans live in Britain and Manchester is home to the largest community, according to the BBC. It was a focus of celebrations when the Kadhafi regime fell in 2011.

His parents immigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester where they have lived for at least ten years. They had three sons and a daughter. 

Abedi grew up in the Whalley Range area which was in news in 2015 when twins and grade A pupils, Zahra and Salma Halane, who were both aspiring medical students, left their homes and moved to ISIS-controlled Syria.

Trip to Libya

Abedi had recently returned from Libya, according to The Times , which cited a school friend as saying he left three weeks ago and returned in the last few days.

Business Standard had also reported that the 22-year-old had ties to Al Qaeda and had received terror training abroad. 

Education

Abedi began studying business and management at Salford University in Manchester in 2014 but he dropped out after two years and did not complete his degree.

He did not live in university accommodation and had not been in any trouble at the university. He was also not on any radar for pastoral or social care and was not known to have participated in any university societies.

Religious views

It is understood Abedi never met with the university's resident imam. However, Abedi worshiped at a suburban mosque, where his father was a well-known face who sometimes performed the call to prayer.

Abedi used an improvised explosive device, apparently packed with metal, to massacre concertgoers and end his own life.

There were unconfirmed reports in Manchester that the whole family apart from the two elder sons recently returned to Libya.

With inputs from agencies