ISIS wing claims responsibility for Minnesota mall attack

The man who stabbed nine people at a Minnesota mall Saturday before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer was a "soldier of the Islamic state," according to an ISIS-linked news agency.

The statement posted online Sunday by the Amaq agency follows a pattern of ISIS-related media claiming responsibility for what appear to be the acts of individuals across Europe in the past few months.

CNN cannot independently confirm this latest claim.

"We still don't have anything substantive that would suggest anything more than what we know already, which is this was a lone attacker," St. Cloud Police Chief William Blair Anderson told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday. "And right now, we're trying to get to the bottom of his motivations."

The FBI is calling the attack "a potential act of terrorism."

Community leaders fear anti-Muslim backlash, call for unity
In response to local reports identifying the attacker as being of Somali descent, members of the Muslim and Somali communities held a news conference Sunday expressing their grief for the victims and calling for unity.

"We are also concerned about the potential backlash," said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter in Minnesota. "We understand in St. Cloud there is more anti-Muslim organizing and we hope they do not use this incident to divide … our community."

Ahmed Said, executive director of the Somali American Relations Council, had previously disclosed that it was unclear if religion motivated the attack, "but we know he is Somali," the Minneapolis StarTribune quoted him as saying. Authorities have yet to confirm the attacker's ethnicity. CNN was also unable to confirm if he was Somali.

St. Cloud is home to one of Minnesota's larger immigrant Muslim communities and tensions with some members in the larger community have spiked at times, the StarTribune reported. The Minneapolis newspaper and the St. Cloud Times identified the attacker as a member of the Somali community.

In 2014, there was damage to mosques in St. Cloud and in 2013 the Muslim community in the city withdrew a bid to build a larger mosque because of tensions, the StarTribune reported.

Speaking at Sunday's news conference, Mohamoud Mohamed, a spokesman for the Central Minnesota Islamic Center in St. Cloud, emphasized that the central Minnesota Muslim community has no relationship with ISIS or any other "Islamic terrorist group."

"We are the victims of those terrorist groups," he said. "Islam is peace… I pray for the victims."

The state was at the center of a federal investigation into the recruitment of fighters for ISIS. Nine Somali-Minnesotans were convicted at trial or pleaded guilty in a plot to travel to Syria to join ISIS. In years back, several dozen male residents left to join Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group working to turn Somalia into an Islamist state.
"What's remarkable about this case was that nothing stopped these defendants from plotting their goal," said US Attorney Andrew M. Luger of the District of Minnesota in announcing federal charges against the men.

"They were not confused young men. They were not easily influenced. These are focused men who are intent on joining a terrorist organization by any means possible."

But on Saturday, a Somali-American mother said she waited fearfully outside the mall Saturday, just like other citizens of the central Minnesota city, because her son was inside during the attack.

"This has been a dark day; it is a day we will never forget," said Lul Hersi. "Let us unite as one Minnesota… Please let's spread love instead of hate. ISIS does not represent us. It does not represent Islam, and it does not represent Somalis."
The attack at the mall