LONDON • American pop singer Ariana Grande has paid a surprise visit to young fans who were injured in a suicide bomb attack on a concert she gave in Manchester last month, posing with them for wefies and signing T-shirts.
Meanwhile, Germany's biggest rock festival will resume after being disrupted by fears of a possible "terrorist threat" which have proved to be unfounded, the organisers said yesterday.
Grande returned to Britain on Friday to lead an all-star benefit concert today. She quickly headed for a hospital in the northern English city where many of the injured are being treated.
The Manchester Evening News newspaper said she brought presents and chatted with young fans, including 10-year-old Jaden Farrell-Mann, who suffered fractures to both legs and shrapnel wounds and has undergone two operations.
"Jaden was just sitting there watching TV and (Ariana) walked in. She was absolutely amazed! It was a complete surprise," her mother Sharon told the paper. "She'd met Prince William earlier and then Ariana walked in."
Mr Adam Harrison told the BBC his daughter Lily "felt like a rock star" after meeting her idol late on Friday and was "chomping at the bit" to attend the concert.
The One Love Manchester concert will also feature Coldplay, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Take That and the Black Eyed Peas. It will take place at the Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground.
Fans who attended Grande's earlier show that was targeted by the bomber are being offered free tickets to the concert, which will be broadcast on British television. Proceeds from tickets sold will go to the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund set up to aid grieving families and victims of the attack.
The May 22 attack by suicide bomber Salman Abedi killed 22 people and wounded 116. Eleven people are in police custody as part of investigations into the attack.
In Germany, police told Agence France-Presse that searches at the three-day Rock am Ring, held near the south-western city of Koblenz, were over. Some 90,000 people are expected to attend the event which ends today.
"After a series of intensive searches across the site, the fears of an imminent danger were not confirmed," the organisers said. "The police gave the go-ahead" for the festival to restart, they added, without specifying when the event would resume.
The festival was evacuated on Friday evening after Koblenz police said they were in possession of "concrete elements, in the light of which a possible terrorist threat cannot be ruled out".
Security for the festival had already been stepped up, with an additional 1,200 staff, in response to the May 22 Manchester bombing.
Last year's Rock am Ring programme was curtailed by violent storms in which dozens of people were injured by lightning.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
