Advertiser columnist Ruth Wishart offers her thoughts on Monday's terror attack in Manchester in which 22 people were killed.

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A FRIEND whose daughter once worked with a woman now employed by the BBC in Manchester, phoned that city on Tuesday morning to check the woman’s own teenage children had not been at the concert.

They hadn't, the woman repored. But her nephew and niece were still missing.

And in one small family story the enormity of the horror visited on the north of England becomes intensely personal.

The media, trying to find an acceptable balance between being informative and intrusive, broadcast the story of a mother up all night beside her phone waiting desperately for news of her young daughter.

In her unbearable anxiety she had posted her child’s picture and her own phone number on social media.

It brought her no good news but literally hundreds of calls, some of them – unbelievably – just time wasting self publicists. And some idiot trolls posted pictures online wanting to boost traffic to their own sites.

Like everything else about this latest tragedy such stories of horrendous behaviour were quickly combated by accounts of ordinary citizens reacting with common humanity; anxious in whatever way presented itself, to ease the pain and suffering of fellow Mancunians.

And even the much maligned social media, too often home to aggression and torment, displayed its capacity for utility in time of need.

I was particularly moved by one post of a young girl in a yellow hoodie being sought by her distraught friend and fellow concert goer, from whom she’d been separated.

Almost immediately came a return message that she had been found, and was safe and well with a couple who’d found and sheltered her and reported her phone had died.

Can there be anything more innocent than waving a child off to a longed for evening at a pop concert, or anything more excruciating than learning the venue has been partially blown up by someone deranged enough to take his own life along with those of others – many of them painfully young?

I’m not an adherent of any church, but I was also touched by a powerful and timely statement from the Bishop of Manchester who addressed his plea for a call to community arms to fellow Christians, Jews, Muslims, and those of no faith.

His was an inclusive message more pertinent than that from any politician intoning the usual clichés about terrorism.

Chillingly, it appears that there are many more wrong headed, brainwashed, potential perpetrators of this kind of mindless violence now in our midst than sufficient numbers of counter terrorism specialists available to track them.

Apparently all the experts can do is make an educated guess as to who is most likely to cause mayhem.

That calculation backfired in the Westminster murders, and perhaps also in Manchester.

But what is also true is that we have been protected from more frequent outrages by those same dedicated men and women with the thankless task of monitoring potential suspects.

They say their best hope is for communities to be alert and committed to reporting suspicious behaviour - even, perhaps especially, if it involves a relative or friend.

If any good is to come from this evil, perhaps an increased willingness to do just that will prevent other parents trapped by their phones in an agony of uncertainty.