The FBI is looking into the sudden disappearance of at least 20 Somalis in Minneapolis, as some suspect they have left the United States to join radical Islamic groups fighting in Somalia. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda, recently praised the success of such militants in the African country.

“At least one mother has received a phone call from her son. He told her he was in Somalia, but would not tell her what he was doing there,” FOX 9 News KMSP reported.

Ahirwa Ahmed, one of the Somalis who disappeared, is suspected of carrying out a suicide bombing in northern Somalia on October 29. The report said that at least eight Somalia men between the ages of 17 and 22 left Minneapolis on August 1, and another ten left on November 4.

The Middle East Media Research Institute also reported that a video posted on radical Islamic websites by a Somali group called the Shabab al-Mujahideen is calling on Muslims in Europe and the U.S. to come join their forces in Somalia.

In late November 2007, a Somali immigrant was sent to prison for 10 years for working alongside an Al-Qaeda terrorist in a plot to bomb a shopping mall in Ohio.