US pop star Ariana Grande announced Tuesday she would return to Manchester to headline a star-studded benefit concert for the victims of the deadly attack on her show last week.<\/b>
\nMANCHESTER, United Kingdom \u2014 US pop star Ariana Grande announced Tuesday she would return to Manchester to headline a star-studded benefit concert for the victims of the deadly attack on her show last week.
Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Usher and Take That will join her for Sunday\u2019s concert in memory of the 22 people who died, seven of them children.
\u201cOur response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder and to live more kindly and generously than we did before, \u201d Grande said.
The 23-year-old said she was \u201cbroken\u201d and suspended her world tour after the bomb went off near an exit of the Manchester Arena venue at the finale of her show on May 22.
Fans who attended that show will be offered free tickets to the benefit concert at the Old Trafford cricket ground, which has a 50,000 capacity for concerts, with the rest sold to raise money for the affected families.
Grande is a favorite of pre-teens and as well as the children killed, a number of the victims were parents who came to pick up their daughters.
Manchester-born Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher made his solo debut on Tuesday with a sell-out concert in aid of the bombing victims.
Like Grande\u2019s, it raised money for the \u201cWe Love Manchester Emergency Fund\u201d set up by the local council and the British Red Cross, to help the grieving families and victims.
Ahead of the show starting, 25-year-old Marnie Taylor said she hoped Gallagher would boost everyone\u2019s mood.
\u201cKind of bring back the gig spirit of what gigs are supposed to be, they\u2019 re supposed to be safe, they\u2019 re supposed to be somewhere where people can escape, \u201d she told AFP outside the O2 Ritz venue.
Gallagher said it was important to move forward in the wake of the terror attack.
\u201cWe need to enjoy life\u2026 We\u2019 ll be trying to lift people. Otherwise the poor kids who died at the gig have died in vain, \u201d he told the Manchester Evening News.
As life in Britain\u2019s third-largest city resumed a semblance of normality, the train station next to the attack site reopened earlier on Tuesday.
\u201cThere\u2019s still a weird feeling, you know, armed police, a lot of unease, \u201d said 59-year-old David Keys as he got off a train at Manchester Victoria.
Troops were deployed at key public sites last week as Britain\u2019s national terror threat was raised to maximum, and police hunted suspected accomplices of bomber Salman Abedi.
The 22-year-old, who was born in Manchester to Libyan parents, was killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Britain\u2019s threat level was reduced back from \u201ccritical\u201d to \u201csevere\u201d on Saturday, and the army has been stood down.
Police on Tuesday released three men who had been arrested as part of the terror probe, while 11 people remain in custody in Britain.
Abedi\u2019s brother Hashem and father Ramadan have also been arrested in Libya, where authorities say the two brothers were both IS jihadists.
Questions are growing over whether intelligence services missed any vital clues, after a report in the Mail on Sunday that US authorities had previously warned Britain\u2019s MI5 intelligence service about Abedi.
British police revealed Tuesday that Abedi had appeared in police records over theft, receiving stolen goods and assault in 2012 but was never flagged up for any radical views.
\u201cHe was known to the police for some relatively minor matters, \u201d Manchester police chief Ian Hopkins told BBC radio, adding: \u201cI am not privy to what the security service did or didn\u2019 t know about the individual at this time.\u201d
Abedi reportedly fought in the Libyan conflict to topple former dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Police released a security camera image of Abedi carrying a large blue suitcase, appealing for any information about where he might have been.
\u201cWe are just trying to make sure we capture everything that he has discarded so we can then see what the significance is, \u201d police chief Hopkins said.
\u201cHas it (the suitcase) got DNA on it of people that may have helped him? Has it material he may have used?\u201d CBB<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 23<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: -0.6<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n