UK security minister says no specific threat to public this weekend

LONDON (Reuters) – British emergency services are prepared for possible attacks on public events over an upcoming holiday weekend but have no information on specific threats after Monday’s bomb attack in Manchester which killed 22, a government minister said.

Monday is a public holiday in Britain, and the weekend sees a number of high-profile events such as the soccer FA Cup final in London on Saturday.

Security minister Ben Wallace said reports that hospitals had been told to be prepared for the weekend were part of a general heightened sense of security and not a response to specific intelligence.

“That is predominantly precautionary… There is no specific threat against an individual event,” Ben Wallace said on BBC radio.

He also said police were confident of rolling up a network of people involved in Monday’s attacks, and said the government needed tools to force companies such as Facebook to remove dangerous online material more quickly.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by David Milliken)