In the hours before midnight when the nation would be welcoming in the New Year, terror returned to Manchester. Just before 9pm and yards from the Manchester Arena, where 22 people, many of them children had been murdered in a suicide attack, all hell was about to break loose. Between platforms A and B at Manchester Victoria Metrolink tram station, a man dressed head-to-toe in black mounted a frenzied and sustained attack on a couple in their 50s waiting patiently for a tram. He screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ - meaning ‘God is great’ - while stabbing at them with two knives, one in each hand. “I just heard this most blood-curdling scream and looked down the platform,” said Sam Clack, 38, a BBC producer on a New Year’s Eve night out, “What it looked like was a guy in his 60s with a woman of similar age and another guy all dressed in black. “It looked like they were having a fight but she was screaming in this blood-curdling way.” The screams alerted British Transport Police officers on patrol ...
