Manchester attack:
Who was Salman Abedi?
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| Salman Abedi has been named by police as the Manchester bomber |
The BBC understands that Abedi was a "mule" carrying out the attack for a larger network of collaborators, which is being investigated by Greater Manchester Police.
But what do we know about him?
Abedi was born in Manchester on New Year's Eve 1994 to Libyan parents who had fled that country after becoming opponents of Colonel Gaddafi's regime.
Having spent a few years in London, the family moved to Manchester where Abedi's father did the call to prayer at a mosque in Didsbury.
Friends remember him as a good footballer, a keen supporter of Manchester United and a user of cannabis. He had a sister and two brothers.
Abedi attended Burnage Academy for Boys in Manchester between 2009 and 2011, before going to the Manchester College until 2013 and then Salford University in 2014, before dropping out to work in a bakery.
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Ramadan Abedi, the father of the Manchester suicide bomber
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A former classmate of Abedi told the BBC that "he was a very jokey lad" but was at the same time was "very short tempered", saying Abedi would lose his temper over "the littlest thing".
The man, who does not want to be identified, said: "What I realised was he had a short temper but apart from that was a very sound lad."
He said Abedi was "away at random times throughout the year - but I don't know if that was because he was out the country, or just didn't show up to school, because he did hang around with the wrong crowd and was very, very gullible".
"You could tell him anything and he would pretty much fall for it," he added.
Another, who also did not want to be named, told the BBC Abedi did not "come across as an intelligent person".
Asked whether he thought Abedi might have been manipulated by more intelligent people, he replied: "A hundred percent.
"I can't imagine the idea that he would be able to go through with such a complicated procedure. He must have had help."
"I wasn't shocked," the classmate added. "He fits the profile for a suicide bomber."
By the time he left Burnage Academy for Boys - formerly Burnage High School - in 2011, Abedi had become "more and more religious", later cutting ties with former classmates.
It was while at Manchester College that two people who knew Abedi made separate calls to an anti-terrorism hotline to warn the police about his extremist views.
A community support worker, who did not wish to be named, said they contacted the authorities after he publicly said "he was supporting terrorism" and "being a suicide bomber is OK".
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Abedi's family lived at more than one address in the city, including a property at Elsmore Road, in the Fallowfield area, that was raided by police on Tuesday.
For a while Abedi left the UK too, but he returned in the days before the bombing. During his trip back from Libya he briefly stopped off at Düsseldorf Airport, having reportedly been in Prague, but remained in the airport's transit zone.
The BBC also understands Abedi was in Manchester earlier this year, when he told people of the value of dying for a cause and made hardline statements about suicide operations and the conflict in Libya.
Greater Manchester Police would not comment on the claims.
His sister, Jomana, has said she believed her brother may have been reacting to US-led strikes in the Middle East.
"He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge.
"Whether he got that is between him and God," she reportedly told the Wall Street Journal.
It is also being reported that a Libyan government spokesman said 15 minutes before he blew himself up, Abedi called his mother and brother.
Manchester is home to one of the largest Libyan communities in the UK. Neighbours have talked about the family having a Libyan flag flying in its house at certain times of the year.
BBC home editor Mark Easton said the area was known to have been home to a number of Islamist extremists in recent years; some with links to Syria and Libya; some alive and some dead.
Abedi's older brother Ismail, 23, is one of eight men in custody in the UK following the attack.
Hamid El-Sayed, who worked for the UN on tackling radicalisation and who now works at the University of Manchester, said Abedi had a "really bad relationship" with his family.
"Eventually he was doing very bad at his university, at his education, and he didn't complete, and they tried to take him back to Libya several times. He had difficulties adjusting to European lifestyle," he said.
