Manchester mass shooting being investigated as 'attempted murder'

The shooting unfolded more than a year after the terror attack at Manchester arena, which led to tributes seen here. (Fox News, File)

Police in Manchester, England, are still searching for a suspect in a mass shooting they are investigating as “attempted murder.”

The incident unfolded in the Moss Side, an inner-city area, around 2:25 a.m. Sunday. An estimated 10 people, ranging in age from 12 to their 50s, were wounded – mostly with pellet-wounds to their legs, indicative of a shotgun discharged at close range, according to police.

Four people remained hospitalized while eight others have since been discharged.

The wounded were part of a crowd celebrating after the end of a two-day Manchester carnival in Alexandra Park commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the “Windrush generation” – a group from the Caribbean who came to England to fill a labor shortage on a passenger liner called the Empire Windrush.

Footage posted online in the immediate aftermath of the attack showed alarm and confusion as the crowd rapidly dispersed.

Officials have not yet identified a motive for the attack and the investigation was ongoing.

“However, we’ve got to be clear, it would be obvious to any particular person that discharging a firearm in a large crowd like this is completely reckless,” the chief superintendent of the Greater Manchester Police, Wasim Chaudhry, said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for crime praised the police for their “swift action” as well as the “local people who have responded quickly to say this doesn’t reflect the Moss Side of 2018.”

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“It’s an individual, an idiot, who was messing around with a firearm and you can’t tar a whole community because of some idiotic behavior,” Pat Kearney, a local Labor councilor, responded.

The shooting came amid a nationwide spike in violence across Britain, as officials have grappled with how to suppress the escalating crime rates, which includes an increase in knife-related crimes by 16 percent in the past year, homicides up by 12 percent and a robbery bump of 30 percent.

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In May of last year, a terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena killed 23 people and wounded more than 130 others. Salman Abedi, a British citizen who hailed from Libya, detonated a vest of homemade explosives in the attack.