UPDATE | UK police: 19 killed, 50 injured at Grande concert

LONDON

At least 19 people were killed and 50 injured Monday night in an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, that police are treating as a possible terrorist attack.

The explosion happened near an entrance to the 21,000-seat arena just minutes after Grande’s concert ended and the singer left the stage, witnesses said.

Manchester Arena reported on its Facebook page that the incident took place outside the venue in a public space.

Law enforcement cordons blocked off the entire area as a swarm of police cars and ambulances moved in and began evacuating bleeding concert patrons.

“This is currently being treated as a terrorist incident until police know otherwise,” Manchester police said in a statement.

Grande was not injured. “Ariana is okay. We are further investigating what happened,” said Joseph Carozza, the artist’s publicist with Republic Records, a division of Universal Music group.

One witness, who had left the arena just after the end of the concert, heard a “huge explosion” near one of the arena’s exits, close to where concertgoers picked up their tickets before the show.

“Everyone stopped and all talking stopped,” Charlotte, 18, from Manchester, wrote in a direct message on Twitter. Then she saw people running out of the exits. “Everyone was running and screaming. And people was screaming evacuate.”

Lauren Sanders, 15, was near the stage when she heard an explosion that seemed to come from near the entrance of the theater, where the audience had streamed toward the exits, perhaps two minutes after Grande left the stage.

“Then everyone who was leaving started screaming and running the other way to another exit,” Sanders wrote in a direct message on Twitter. A huge Grande fan, she had come to the concert with her mother. “I grabbed my mum’s hand and started running, following a lot of others towards an exit.” Outside, police were everywhere, trying to clear the area, she said.