FBI trying to confirm ID of Somalia suicide bomber

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal authorities said they are trying to confirm the identity of a suicide bomber who carried out a deadly attack in Somalia after a militant group claimed Thursday that the man was a Somali-American from Minnesota.

The group al-Shabab said 25-year-old Abdullahi Ahmed of Minneapolis bombed the African Union base in Mogadishu on Monday, killing two AU troops and a government soldier. Minnesota, home to the largest Somali community in the U.S., has been the center of a federal investigation in recent years into the recruiting and travels of young men who left the U.S. believed to have gone to fight with al-Shabab.

The FBI is aware of the bombing and has agents in East Africa investigating, and the agency is trying to determine the bomber’s identity, said Steve Warfield, an FBI spokesman in Minnesota.

“We are trying to find out who that guy is and if there are any ties to Minnesota, but right now we don’t know,” Warfield said.

He said that process could take time, and authorities may never get definitive answers. Not only do agents need to get into the war-torn country, which has been unstable for decades, they have to find something that could be tested for authenticity, he said.

More than 20 young men have left Minnesota in waves since 2007 to allegedly join al-Shabab, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.

A total of 19 people have been charged in Minnesota in connection with the travelers and alleged terror financing. Others have been charged in San Diego and St. Louis with funneling money to the terror group.

In a Thursday report on the Somali Memo website, a media outlet that a terror expert says has an intimate relationship with al-Shabab, a man claiming to be Abdullahi Ahmed spoke with an interviewer about the impending Mogadishu attack. A translator who listened to the audio recording for The Associated Press said the man claiming to be Ahmed said he left Minnesota two years ago to join the jihad, and that he was happy about his upcoming mission.

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