The Islamic State group has said that the 18-year-old student who attacked Ohio State University on Monday was influenced by their propaganda. The Somali student Abdul Razak Ali Artan had injured 11 people after he drove a car into a large crowd and stabbed others with a butcher’s knife. The terrorist group’s media agency Amaq said that jihadist “soldier” Artan “carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of international coalition countries,” according to a translation by the SITE group that monitors extremists.
Investigators are looking into a Facebook post that could be Artan’s, which abused Muslims and mentioned radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. A Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman said Artan was known to their agency before the attack on Monday, in which he was shot dead.
US President Barack Obama was also briefed on the attack by his aides. Separately, a spokesperson for a Somalian group in Columbus, where the University is located, said the community was standing “shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow Americans in condemning the sickening violence”.
Meanwhile, classes resumed at the university on Tuesday, and eight of the injured were discharged from hospital, according to Andrew Thomas, chief medical officer of Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.
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