Police remember fallen colleagues as second man arrested

Sir Peter Fahy said he could not be sure all the explosive devices had been recovered from the area where Pcs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone were attacked and killed in an ambush on Tuesday in what was one of the darkest days ever for the police.

Two men have been arrested and are being questioned over their deaths – Dale Cregan, 29, who was one of the country’s most wanted men, and a 28-year-old man who was detained in the Hattersley area yesterday on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

Cregan, who had been the subject of a huge manhunt over the murders of father and son David and Mark Short, handed himself in to police shortly after the two officers were killed.

It has emerged he had previously been questioned and bailed in connection with the shooting of Mark Short, 23, in a Manchester pub in May, before going on the run.

“We are not confident that we have recovered all the grenades, we don’t know for certain, so we’ve made it clear to our officers that the threat is still there,” Sir Peter said.

“I would want that to be the message. This has been a long-standing criminal feud between different outfits in Manchester and in the Tameside area, and that threat is very much there.”

He said the force had issued Osman warnings – notices given to people under threat of being murdered or seriously injured – to “a large number of individuals”.

Tens of thousands of tributes have poured in for the two constables, including from the Queen, and the force held a minute’s silence in their memory at 11am, nearly 24 hours after the attack.