An inquiry on the May 2017 Manchester Arena attack heard that the National counter-terrorism police relied on Twitter updates for almost two hours following the suicide-bombing.
Attack details taken from Twitter updates for about 2 hours
In a suicide bomb attack, Salman Abedi killed 22 men, women, and children at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
Neil Basu, Assistant Commissioner, first heard about the Manchester Arena attack from his senior officers' husband. The country's senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism said he heard about the attack 24 minutes after it happened.
At 12:13 a.m. or almost two hours after the incident, the SO15 Reserve, a 24-hour operations center for national counter-terrorism operations, still relied on Twitter for information on the attack, as per Sky News.
On the way to Scotland Yard shortly before 1 a.m., Basu spoke to Assistant Chief Constable Debbie Ford from Greater Manchester Police, but he could not take notes as he was driving.
Along the way, Basu needed to talk through the phone to Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson, the Counter-Terrorism Policing North-West head.
On May 22, Basu, the country's most senior counter-terrorism officer now, was at home when he received a call from Assistant Chief Constable Terri Nicholson at 10:55 p.m.
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According to Daily Mail, emergency services were not told of the 'significant' issues with their plans to respond to terror attacks; the inquiry further heard about the Manchester Arena bombing attack.
In Manchester, emergency services took part in a training exercise in May 2016, before the Abedi suicide-bombing attack, to determine how prepared they were for a terror attack.
The inquiry regarding the May 2017 Manchester Arena attack revealed that the training exercise a year before exposed 'significant issues' with communication between emergency services and the workload being assigned to one officer, who was left unable to fulfill his duty.
Counsel to the inquiry, Paul Greany QC, said evidence might reveal that the May 2016 exercise called Operation Winchester Accord had significant problems. However, those did not come to the attention of the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum (GMRF).
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PM Theresa May told police to 'break the momentum' of terror attacks
Following the Manchester Arena attack, Theresa May told MI5 and police to "break the momentum" of terror attacks in Britain, a senior officer said. Basu recalled the then prime minister's direction when he spoke at a public inquiry into the attack.
The suicide bombing was the second terror attack to strike Britain and was followed by two other fatal attacks within a month in 2017, as per the Independent via MSN.
Assistant Commissioner Basu said May urged Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner and the director-general of MI5, saying, "You need to break the momentum," shortly after the Manchester Arena attack.
On Tuesday, Basu gave evidence to the Manchester Arena attack inquiry and said a "surge of activity" was triggered as police tried to crack down on terrorist activity.
Assets were focused on pursuing threats, including 600 live operations and 3,000 MI5 subjects of interest, he added.
