Somali terror group has 20 American members

(NBC News) The Somali terror group that stormed a Kenyan mall, killing more than 60 people, has a larger U.S. contingent than any other al Qaeda offshoot, said U.S. officials, and is now more prone to mount deadly attacks on targets outside Somalia.

Al Shabaab's attacks on foreign targets include an attempt to kill a U.S. congressman visiting Mogadishu in 2009. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., was uninjured in the mortar attack.

Via Twitter, al Shabaab has claimed that six of the jihadis holding hostages at Nairobi’s Westgate mall are Americans, and provided names for what it said were individuals from Minneapolis, Kansas City, Maine, Illinois and Arizona.

Senior officials said that U.S. law enforcement has run the list of U.S. persons named on Twitter as involved in the Kenya mall attack against the list of U.S. persons known to be affiliated with Al Shabaab. They have found no match at this time.

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