International

In the hours that followed the Manchester attack, details started to emerge of the suicide bomber who decided to pack a bomb with nails, nuts and bolts to detonate in a crowd of children.

In the days to come, people will try to work out why 22-year-old Salman Abedi chose to carry out a terror attack that took the lives of 22 people. The youngest person he killed was just eight years old.

Abedi was born in 1994, in Manchester, the son of Libyan parents who had fled the Gaddafi regime and, like many refugees fleeing to the UK, ended up being placed in the city.He was one of four children. His older brother Ismail was born in Westminster in 1993. He had a younger brother called Hashim, and a sister called Jomana.

A childhood friend of Ismail described Salman as "normal". There was, he said, nothing to suggest he was violent. "He was always friendly."

Abedi had been registered at a number of addresses in Fallowfield, a community that sits in the shadow of Manchester City's old Maine Road stadium.The area, which is dominated by social housing and students, has its share of the city's drug and violence problems - but nothing on the scale of its more infamous neighbour Moss Side.

Nor is it a hotbed of radicalism.

Salman was said to have attended Didsbury Mosque, where Ismail volunteered and his father, Ramadan Abedi, used to perform the call to prayer.

The mosque, also known as the Manchester Islamic Centre, is described by trustee Fawaz Haffar as "moderate and modern".Mr Haffar said he remembered seeing Abedi's father praying.

He said: "I see him praying but I don't know really who he is. I see him sometimes raising the azan, or call to prayer, but that was a long time ago.

"As far as I knew he went back to Libya when things were much better over there, to work over there.

"That's all I know about him. He was devout as far as I know."By 2014, Abedi was studying business and management at Salford University but, after two years, he stopped going to lectures and dropped out.

At the time of the bombing, he was registered at an address in Elsmore Road, where neighbours said he had lived for the last year.

Alan Kinsey, who lived opposite, described the man living at the house as keeping odd hours and who once stuck his middle finger up at him when he complained about a badly parked car.

He said Abedi appeared to be living alone but had many visitors in the time he was there.Simon Turner, who also lives in the area, said that two "young lads" lived in the house but he knew very little about them.

Other neighbours said Abedi had kept himself to himself.

He had recently returned from Libya and France's interior minister said he had probably travelled to Syria at some point.

A friend told The Times: "He went to Libya three weeks ago and came back recently, like days ago."

Reports also suggest he knew a fellow Mancunian called Raphael Hostey, who left the UK in 2013 and joined Islamic State in Syria.

Hostey, who was once described as an "inspirational figure" for would-be jihadis, was believed to have been killed in a drone strike in 2016.