Police shoot dead man who stabs nine in shopping centre at St Cloud in Minnesota

A SOMALIAN man has identified his 22-year-old son as the Islamic State “soldier” who stabbed nine people in a US shopping mall.

THE father of the man who stabbed nine people at a central Minnesota mall has identified him as a 22-year-old college student.

Ahmed Adan told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that police told him Saturday night that his son, Dahir A. Adan, died at Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud.

He says police didn’t mention the attack on the mall, but they seized photos and other materials from the family’s apartment. Authorities haven’t publicly identified the attacker. They say the attacker stabbed nine people Saturday night before an off-duty police officer shot and killed him. None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Ahmed Adan, who is Somali, says his son came to the U.S. 15 years ago and was a student at St. Cloud Technical and Community College. He told the Star Tribune he had “no suspicion” that his son might have been involved in terrorist activity.

Leaders of the Somali community in central Minnesota said the suspect does not represent the larger Somali community, and they expressed fear about backlash over the attack.

Minnesota has the nation’s largest Somali community, with census numbers placing the population at about 40,000, but community activists say the population is much higher.

The immigrant community has been a target for terror recruiters in recent years.

More than 20 young men have left the state since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia, and roughly a dozen people have left in recent years to join militants in Syria.

In addition, nine Minnesota men face sentencing on terror charges for plotting to join the Islamic State group.

Somali-American leaders at a press conference in St. Cloud address the stabbing and shooting incident that happened Saturday at Crossroads Center Mall. Picture: Dave Schwarz/St. Cloud Times via AP

“POTENTIAL ACT OF TERRORISM”

The stabbing spree on Saturday in Minnesota is being investigated as a “potential act of terrorism,” the FBI agent in charge of the investigation said on Sunday.

The agent, Rick Thornton, told journalists in the city of St. Cloud that there was still “a lot we don’t know” about any possible international link to the assailant, who wounded nine people at a shopping mall before being shot dead.

However, there is no evidence at this point of a link between the New York bombing that injured 29 people and a Minnesota stabbing spree, claimed by the Islamic State group, that wounded at least eight, police said on Sunday.

“Right now we don’t have any evidence to suggest that they were connected,” Chief William Blair Anderson of the St. Cloud police force in Minnesota told CNN.

The mass stabbing is one of three “terror” attacks on US soil in one day, including New Jersey and New York.

Eight people were injured in a Minnesota mall stabbing. Picture: Youtube/KSTP5TV.

Anderson confirmed that the attacker at a shopping mall in his city had asked people if they were Muslim before stabbing them, but added that his motive remained unclear.

“Whether that was a terrorist attack or not, I’m not willing to say that right now because we just don’t know,” he said.

A report on jihad-linked news site Amaq on Sunday said that the attacker was “a soldier of the Islamic State.” Police said earlier that the man made “some references to Allah” before stabbing several people in the shopping mall.

Speaking to reporters in Central Park in New York, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said people should defy terrorists by going about their daily lives.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks to the media during a press conference in Central Park, NYC. Picture: Jake Nowakowski.

“The one thing we can’t do is let people who seek to do us harm, whatever their motivations may be, to coward us. We defy them by going about our lives in the normal way.” He said the Minnesota attack was an example of a lone act attack, as seen in Australia.

The assailant in the mall, who has not been identified, was shot dead by an off-duty officer.

Early reports said that eight people had been stabbed, and all but one was treated and released at a hospital. Anderson said on Sunday, however, that a possible ninth victim might have left the scene on his own.

Media reports said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had joined the investigation.

Currently in hiding in the crossroads mall, hold your loved ones close tonight

— McKenzie Laubach (@laubachmckenzie) September 18, 2016

Speaking shortly after midnight, the St. Cloud police chief said the armed suspect had entered the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud — a city of about 67,000 people some 110km northwest of Minneapolis — and attacked at least eight people.

The lone suspect was wearing a private security uniform and had at least one knife, and “made some references to Allah,” Anderson said.

“That suspect was confronted by an off-duty police officer and summarily shot and killed,” he said.

The suspect had a history of minor traffic violations, Anderson said, but “wasn’t under any surveillance by our agency.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she had been briefed about the Minnesota stabbing as well as Saturday’s explosions in New York, as well as a pipe bomb blast hours earlier in a trash can in New Jersey in which no one was injured.

The St. Cloud mall will remain closed as police continue their investigation. “It’s an awful day,” Anderson said. “Starting tomorrow things won’t be the same here.”