The Week That Was The Manchester Bombing The Manchester bombing that claimed 22 young lives was a sobering start to the week. The attack was notably sophisticated, carried out by a conventional suicide bomber with the skills to make triacetone triperoxide, construct the explosive device, quietly network among multiple people without getting caught and effectively deploy a device against a soft target. But it was also notable that the bomber had looser ties to the Islamic State core than did the attackers in the Paris and Brussels cases. Though the 22-year-old bomber, Salman Abedi (a Manchester native of Libyan origin), traveled to Libya multiple times on family trips since the ouster of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and is thought to have traveled from Libya to Syria at least once on one of these trips, he and his Manchester cell appear to have been operating relatively autonomously.