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Police have arrested a commercial pilot as they begin to close in on the Manchester bomber's network of associates.
A 23-year-old man from Libya was today taken into custody by detectives after he was arrested at a property in Shoreham-by-the-Sea, 270 miles from the scene of last week's fatal attack.
The man has named locally as Alaedeen Zakry who describes himself as a 'commercial pilot and digital marketer', running an online market place for Libyans from his home in West Sussex.
He is the 16th person to be arrested by detectives. Houses in Manchester and Chester were also searched overnight by counter-terrorism units while officers are also searching a landfill site in Pilsworth, near Bury.
Today's arrest comes seven days since Salman Abedi detonated a nail bomb in the foyer of Manchester Arena in the moments after an Ariana Grande concert had finished, killing 22 people and injuring 100.
Meanwhile, a number of people were detained after a very noisy raid by armed police in Rusholme, Manchester.
Zakry - also known as Alaedeen Sicri - is understood to have come to Britain from Libya's capital Tripoli when he was 18. He lodged with stunned locals John and Jenny Crump, who today spoke of their shock at the news.
They said he was a perfect lodger who studied hard at the Northbrook College where he studied to become a pilot, passing all his exams.
But around three years ago they said his behaviour began to change and he would go missing for several days, travelling to London with friends.
Jenny Crump said: 'He started going off for days on end and he had all these mates who would come round and he would go to London and stay with them. I didn't know what was happening.'
At 3.30am one morning John and Jenny Crump awoke to police officers knocking on their door and they came in and searched his room but didn't tell them what it was about.