Manchester terror attack: The Muslim heroes who rushed to help victims in the hours after the attack

'We're Muslim, but whether we were Muslim or non-Muslim, we would have done this. We wanted to give something back'

Three Muslim men have described how they rushed to help the victims of the Manchester terror attack on a Monday night which saw terror return to British streets.

Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children as young as eight, and seriously injured 64 others when he blew himself up in the foyer of Manchester Arena as people were leaving an Ariana Grande concert last week.

The attack prompted a fresh wave of anxiety about Islamist extremism in the UK after reports emerged that Abedi may have been radicalised in Manchester.

But many others have praised the actions of ordinary Mancunians who rushed to help the victims, with many pulling extra shifts at local hospitals and others offering lifts and spare rooms to those stranded by the road closures.

​Tawqeer Rashid, a vascular surgeon who works at Manchester Royal Infirmary, was called into Salford Royal Hospital as it has no surgeons with his specialty, arriving at 1am and working until 3pm.

He told the Evening Standard he had operated on a woman with multiple injuries who had a problem with blood flow to her legs which carried on throughout the night and treated another patient with spinal injuries and damaged blood vessels.

Dr Rashid described the injuries he saw as horrific. He said: “It hit home when I was removing the bolts from people. They were bigger than a 50p piece, not little bolts you use in your home — enormous ones.

“This is a level of depravity I cannot understand: how a human being would be capable of planning this if they knew what it would do to another human being.

“These bolts ripped through bodies, into the stomach, the legs, severing arteries, severing nerves, smashing bones and damaging spinal cords.”

Meanwhile in another part of the city, Sam Arshad – who owns the Street Cars taxi firm – gave free rides to people stranded at the arena.

He said he had been driving past when a police officer told him there had been an explosion and he had decided to double back.

Then the phones started “going crazy” with parents and children trying to escape. He called his drivers and they agreed to take people from the arena free of charge.

“The news had started coming in that there had been fatalities, so we got the gist of what was happening. We said we needed to pull together for the people of Manchester”, he said.

A woman passes a street-art graffiti mural, created following the May 22 terror attack at the Manchester Arena, featuring bees, which are synonymous with Manchester as a symbol of the city's industrial heritage, in Stevenson Square, Manchester (Getty Images)

Zaffer Khan also participated in that community spirit by handing out free food and water to victims and emergency workers from their restaurant, Bukhara, which is just half a mile from the arena.

They said they had been alerted to the attack when two women had come in, in distress, and asked for water.

"We’re part of this community,” he told the Standard. “We’re Muslim, but whether we were Muslim or non-Muslim, we would have done this. We wanted to give something back.”

It is not just Muslims in Manchester who have asked the call to help.

Human Appeal, a Muslim charity, has so far raised nearly £15,000 for the victims and their families.

Othman Moqbel, its chief executive, said: “You cannot blame a religion for crazy people who do this.

“We are all praying for the victims and their families.”

He said the people who carried out these attacks were not real Muslims.

“It’s been the same thing throughout the ages — if people have a political agenda they will slap religion on it to justify their ends,” he added.