Mayor of Manchester slams ‘outrageous’ Old Trafford fake bomb abandonment

Greater Manchester’s mayor slammed the abandonment of Manchester United’s game with Bournemouth on Sunday over what turned out to be a fake bomb as “outrageous”, and called for a full inquiry.

Army bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package which was later revealed to be a dummy left behind by a private security company following a training exercise.

Prior to the detonation, the Stretford End and Sir Alex Ferguson Stand were evacuated, before the rest of United’s 75,600 capacity Old Trafford ground was cleared as well, with the Premier League match against Bournemouth called off 20 minutes before Sunday’s scheduled 3pm kick-off.

With cities across Europe on high alert for terror attacks following fatal attacks in Paris and Brussels, Greater Manchester Police initially said they had discovered an “incredibly lifelike explosive device”.

But Tony Lloyd, Greater Manchester’s mayor and the elected police and crime commissioner for the region, said: “It is outrageous this situation arose.

“A full inquiry is required to urgently find out how this happened, why it happened and who will be held accountable.

“This fiasco caused massive inconvenience to supporters who had come from far and wide to watch the match, wasted the time of huge numbers of police officers and the army’s bomb squad, and unnecessarily put people in danger, as evacuating tens of thousands of people from a football stadium is not without risk.”