The mother of the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing has been told about her eight-year-old daughter’s death after waking up from surgery.
Saffie Roussos, from Leyland, Lancashire, was one of the 22 people killed by Salman Abedi when he detonated a backpack bomb at one of the entrances to Manchester Arena on 22 May.
She was at the Ariana Grande concert with her mother, Lisa, and older sister, Ashlee Bromwich, who is in her 20s. Both the women were taken to hospital after the blast.
In a post on Facebook group Leyland Memories, family friend Mike Swanny, who has been asked to act as a family spokesman, said Lisa Roussos was now awake, out of surgery and “aware of the situation”.
He said Roussos “is awake and out of surgery, she is talking, and is fully aware of the situation and is now out of any danger.”
“Now they can start to deal and rebuild their lives, I hope this news will make everyone smile as this is the best news we’ve had through this tragedy,” he said.
When NHS England last provided an update on the status of those injured in the attack it said that 50 people were in hospital, 17 of them in critical care.
Ten men, aged between 18 and 44, remain in custody on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act. Six people – including a 15-year-old boy, a 34-year-old woman and four men – have been released without charge after being arrested by officers investigating the attack.
This week, police released further details about the 22-year-old British-Libyan suicide bomber, including that he had bought most of the key component parts of the explosive device in the few days before the attack.
Many of his movements and actions in the four days after his return to the UK from Libya leading up to the atrocity were also carried out alone, but detectives have not ruled out that he was part of “a wider network”.
