A US counter-terrorism official on Saturday said US nationals had likely joined the ranks of insurgents in Somalia, where Islamist rebels are waging a bitter war against the Western-backed government.
"There is reason to believe that nationals of Western countries, including the United States, have joined up with terrorist groups in Somalia," the official said.
Dozens of people have been killed in recent days as the government tried to drive Islamist insurgents from the capital. Aid agencies said two weeks of fighting had displaced 49,000 people.
The violence erupted amid rumors that the insurgents have been buoyed by support from foreign Al-Qaeda-linked fighters from Europe, North America and the Muslim world.
On Saturday in London, The Times reported an intelligence report on the trend is expected to be presented to the US Congress in the coming week.
The daily said security officials have seen more than 290 fighters from Britain, the United States, Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia enter Mogadishu in recent weeks.
The violence also comes as evidence grows that some Western-based Muslims have funded jihadi groups operating in Somalia.
Last week a naturalized Canadian man of Somali descent pleaded guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to the extremist network Al-Qaeda.
Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, 35, who lives in Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota, gave material support to Al-Qaeda by providing training at camps, supplying personnel and providing funds to the group.
In March 2000, according to his plea agreement, Warsame joined an Al-Qaeda training camp near Kabul, and months later traveled to the Faruq training camp where he met Osama Bin Laden.
In March 2009, US lawmakers heard testimony from top security authorities who warned that growing numbers of Somali youths in the United States were being recruited by Islamic terror groups.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told a hearing on the issue that Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, "has radicalized and recruited young Somali men" in Minneapolis to return to Somalia for training and fighting.
"Perhaps as many as 20 Somali-American teenagers and young men have vanished from their homes in Minneapolis and turned up in Somalia," Lieberman said.
Somalis began emigrating in large numbers to the United States during the beginning of the 1990s to flee civil strife at home.
Since then, they have come to number as many as 200,000, with the largest concentration having settled in the US heartland city of Minneapolis.
Source: AFP
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