A Manchester mosque has been severely damaged in a suspected arson attack.
Five fire engines tackled the blaze at about 23:43 on Sunday at the Nasfat Manchester Islamic Centre.
Mosque spokesman Shamusideen Oladimeji said he believed it was arson. The building was the target of an arson attack three years ago.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) could not confirm if the fire was being treated as a hate crime.
A prayer room and three classrooms were damaged in the attack.
Mr Oladimedji said: “It has been seriously damaged – the police won’t let us in. We don’t know why this happened. We try to be good neighbours and we try to be involved with our local community.”
Nasfat (Nasrul-Lahi-l-Fathi Society of Nigeria) opened the centre in 2009 and it has about 300 members.
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Last month it was reported that lslamophobic attacks had soared more than 500% in Greater Manchester after the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in may.
There were 224 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the month after the attack compared with 37 in the same period in 2016, official figures showed.
