President Donald Trump traveled to the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where he was welcomed at the Presidential palace by his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas.
Following a meeting between Trump and Abbas, the Palestinian leader in a joint Press conference warned that Israel’s failure to recognize a Palestinian state undermines the internationally desired two state solution.
President Trump took to opportunity to extend his condolences, and that of the United States, to the victims of the Manchester suicide bombing, in which at least 22 people were murdered. Trump promised to drive out those terrorists and extremists from society, and emphasized the importance of obliterating the wicked ideology. “This is what I spent these last few days talking about during my trip overseas. Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people and in today’s attack it was mostly innocent children. The terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society for ever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated, and innocent life must be protected, all innocent lives, life must be protected. All civilized nations must join together to protect human life and the sacred right of our citizens to live in safety and in peace,” US President Donald Trump said.
The attack, which police said was a presumed act of terror, occurred during a music concert, with most of the crowed in attendance at a younger age. An investigation into the incident has been launched by local police, in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s national Counter terrorism network and intelligence agencies. This has been the most horrific incident we have ever faced here in Greater Manchester and one that we all hoped we would never see. Families and many young people were out to enjoy a concert at the Manchester Arena, and have very sadly lost their lives. Our thoughts are with those 22 victims that we now know have died, the 59 people who have been injured and their loved ones. We continue to do all we can to support them and they are being treated at eight hospitals across Greater Manchester.” He added, “We have been treating this as a terrorist incident, and we believe at this stage, the attack last night was conducted by one man. The priority is to establish whether he was acting alone, or as part of a network. The attacker, I can confirm, died at the arena. We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated, causing this atrocity,” Manchester police chief Ian Hopkins said.
A counter-terrorism expert told TV7 that the attributes of the heinous terror attack are similar to methods used by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, both potentially behind this attack. The expert further noted that attacks of this sort usually are conducted by a network of people, rather than one individual, a fact British authorities are currently investigating. To this moment, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attack.