Pat Dollard

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Agencie France Presse:

The shooting rampage at Fort Hood was “an act of terrorism,” a senior US official said on Friday, employing a phrase that the Obama administration has previously avoided to describe the attack.

The administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the November 5 shooting spree that left 13 dead at the army base in Texas, was a “terrorist tactic” but the suspected gunman’s links to extremist groups remained under investigation.

“It certainly in my mind was an act of terrorism,” the official told reporters.

He said it was unclear if the suspected gunman, army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan, was directed to act by outside extremists.

“This is an ongoing investigation,” said the official. “Motivation is always a difficult thing to determine.”

The official made the comment as he presented the findings of a White House review into the assault.

Some lawmakers in Congress have been quick to call the Fort Hood rampage an act of terrorism, citing reports Hasan had contacts with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaqi.

The same US-Yemeni cleric also has been tied to the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a US airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

But officials in President Barack Obama’s administration have tended to be careful not to portray the incident as an act of terrorism.

Although the alleged shooter’s possible ties to outside extremists were still being examined, the official told reporters that extremist propaganda and activity coming from Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was cause for serious concern.

“Any interaction with these extremist elements and terrorist elements in Yemen cause me great concern,” he said.

The White House review of the circumstances around the Fort Hood shooting showed that “more rigorous actions” should have been taken prior to the attack and procedures strengthened to ensure better coordination among intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the official said.

Asked if the government could have averted the assault at Fort Hood if key clues had been pieced together in time, the official said: “It’s difficult to say.”

But he said: “Certain things went uncovered, both in terms of information, as well as how information was handled and how information was acted upon.”