Minnesota mall attack stirs local terror fears

A 22-year-old Somali man is dead after stabbing nine people Saturday at a mall in St. Cloud, Minn. The man, identified by his father as Dahir A. Adan, reportedly spoke of Allah and asked one person if he or she was Muslim during the attack. An off-duty police officer shot and killed the suspect. The victims—seven men, one woman, and a 15-year-old girl—all survived without life-threatening injuries.

Islamic State (ISIS) published a report Sunday claiming an alliance with the attacker and calling him a “soldier of the Islamic State.” That link has not been verified, though ISIS does encourage “lone wolf” attacks like the one at the mall in its online propaganda.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is traveling to St. Cloud today to meet with community leaders, who are grappling with the realization of their ongoing fears of a terror attack. Overseas terror groups recruit heavily from Minnesota’s Somali immigrant population, the largest in the nation. More than 20 young men have left the state since 2007 to join the Islamic terror group al-Shabaab in Somalia, and roughly a dozen people have joined militants in Syria in recent years. Nine Minnesota men face sentencing on terror charges for plotting to join Islamic State (ISIS).

Leaders of the Somali community denounced the attack Sunday, saying the attacker did not represent them. Ahmed Adan said his son Dahir was born in Kenya but was Somali and had lived in the United States for 15 years. Until now, a Somali had never committed a terror attack on U.S. soil, said Karen Greenburg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law.