Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has claimed the man who stabbed eight people in a Minnesota shopping mall on Saturday as one of its “soldiers”, without specifying if the still-unidentified suspect, who was shot dead, was in direct contact with the Islamist group. IS (Daesh) have now said the man was one of their “soldiers”. “One guy was bleeding from the side of his face”, Weires said. The men screamed to get out of the mall because someone had a knife. “There were no notifications in the mall at all, it was just people running and screaming”, Ashley said.
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Authorities say all of the injured are expected to survive.
The knifeman “referencing Allah” was shot dead by police after the attack. He was then killed by an off-duty policeman from another jurisdiction. Police are conducting “precautionary searches”, and “the incident is ongoing and is an active investigation”.
St Cloud Hospital said eight people were taken to hospital with stab wounds, seven of them deemed non-life threatening. The eighth was admitted, but no other details about that person’s condition were released.
According to St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis, the shooting happened inside Macy’s.
He attacked his victims at several sites in the shopping center, which remained closed on Sunday as police investigate, the police chief said. The suspect “asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them”, Blair Anderson, the police chief in the city of St. Cloud where the attack took place, told journalists.
“We will be diligent and get to the bottom of this”, Anderson said at the press conference. “Starting tomorrow, things won’t be the same here”.
The ISIS-run Rasd news agency reported the claim on Sunday, saying the attacker had heeded calls from the extremist group for attacks in countries that are part of a US -led anti-ISIS coalition.
It was not immediately clear if the extremist group had planned the attack or even knew about it beforehand.
IS has repeatedly called for lone-wolf attacks on countries in the US-led coalition targeting the jihadist group with air strikes in Syria and Iraq, with France and Belgium bearing the brunt of such actions.
It has also claimed past attacks that are not believed to have been planned by its central leadership. The suspect is believed to be dead, St. Cloud Police Sgt. Jason Burke told the St. Cloud Times.
The suspect had a history of minor traffic violations, Anderson said, but “wasn’t under any surveillance by our agency”.
The attack began shortly after an explosion in a crowded New York City neighborhood injured 29 people. Thousands of people were about to participate in the 5K race in in Seaside Park. There was no indication that any of the incidents were linked.
Harley and Tama Exsted of Isle, who were in St. Cloud on Saturday to watch their son play in a college golf tournament at Blackberry Ridge, were in the mall when the incident occurred.
“All of a sudden I heard pop pop pop”, Harley told the paper. “I thought someone tipped over a shelf”.
“I went closer to the mall entrance by J.C. Penney’s and I was looking at some jeans and all the sudden people were just running in chaos”, Bayne said. “I just saw everybody running away”.
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The couple were unharmed and helped another woman who was running to her vehicle.
