PRISON officers suffered serious injuries when Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi attacked them, the Prison Officers Association (POA) said today.

Mr Abedi threw hot cooking oil over three officers before stabbing them with home-made weapons in the “unprovoked” and “vicious” incident at HMP Frankland in Co Durham on Saturday, the trade union revealed.

Counter Terrorism Policing North East is leading the investigation into the “serious assault,” which the POA said had left the officers with life-threatening injuries, including burns, scalds and stab wounds.

POA national chairman Mark Fairhurst said that Mr Abedi was being held in the Category A separation centre, where inmates are allowed to use cooking facilities.

These centres, introduced in 2017, aim to control prisoners with extreme views, for example by preventing them from disrupting the prison estate, supporting acts of terrorism or radicalising other inmates.

Mr Fairhurst said: “To allow that type of prisoner to access the kitchen and use the utensils that can be used as weapons against staff, and can inflict serious harm on staff, that needs to be removed immediately.

“We’re now worried about the knock-on effect of this and copycat incidents.

“It’s very difficult to get someone into the separation centre because of the process you have to go through, so the intelligence really needs to be on the ball to get someone contained in the separation centre.”

A 2022 inspection found that nine men were housed in two separation centres.

The Frankland unit is on a narrow corridor with a small “room for association” and an area for prisoners to prepare and cook food, the report said, noting that, by 2022, the centres were only been used for Muslim men.

Mr Abedi was jailed in 2020 for at least 55 years for the murders of 22 people following a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande at the Manchester Arena Arena on May 22 2017. Hundreds more were injured.

He planned the atrocity, in which his older brother Salman Abedi detonated a homemade rucksack-bomb in a crowd of concert-goers.

The Old Bailey heard that he was “just as guilty” as his brother.

Responding to Mr Abedi’s attack on the prison officers, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said today: “I will be pushing for the strongest possible punishment.”

The Prison Service said: “Violence in prison will not be tolerated and we will always push for the strongest punishment for attacks on our hard-working staff.”