ISIS claims California shooters were ‘followers’

The couple who killed 14 people and injured 21 people in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, this week were followers of the Islamic State, the militant group claimed on Saturday.

The claim came in an online audio broadcast three days after U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his Pakisani wife Tashfeen Malik, 29, opened fire with assault rifles on a holiday party for civil servants.

"Two followers of Islamic State attacked several days ago a centre in San Bernardino in California," the group's daily online radio broadcast al-Bayan said on Saturday. The militant group did not claim to have directed the attack.

Reuters reported that an English-language version released later called them "soldiers" of Islamic State, rather than "followers" as in the original Arabic. That inconsistency could not immediately be explained.

The broadcast came a day after Facebook confirmed that comments praising Islamic State were posted around the time of the shooting to an account set up by Malik under an alias.

It was not clear if the comments were posted by Malik, or by someone with access to her page.

Shortly after the massacre, authorities searched the couple’s home and found two assault-style rifles, two handguns, 12 pipe bombs and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, officials said, prompting fears they might have been plotting more attacks.

Elsewhere, FBI agents raided a house in California that neighbours said belonged to a childhood friend of Farook. The searched house was next door to the home in which Farook lived with his wife, who were both killed two hours after the shooting. Neighbours named the man who lived there as Enrique Marquez and said he was often seen with Farook.

The house was home to a man authorities believe bought the assault rifles Farook and Malik used in the attack.

Investigators are still trying to piece together the couple’s history and what led them to carry out the shooting.  Particularly, investigators remain at odds as to what the motive behind the attack, while the personal history of Malik in particular remains largely unknown.

FBI officials say Farook and Malik seem to have been inspired by foreign militant groups, but that there was no sign they worked with any of them or that Islamic State even knew who they were.

Estranged relatives of Malik say she and her father seemed to have abandoned the family's moderate Islam and become more radicalized during time they spent in Saudi Arabia.

While investigators have not yet found evidence the couple was part of an organised group or broader terrorist cell, it said on Saturday that “several pieces” of information “point to the perpetrators being radicalized to violence.”

The mass shooting has sparked nationwide debate on terrorism, and president Barack Obama is to address the nation on Sunday night to update the public on the investigation and the broader threat of terrorism.

The mass shooting sparked a new round of the firearms debate with Obama and the New York Times calling for new limits on gun ownership. Many pro-gun voices, including some Republican contenders for the White House, said the new laws would not have stopped the rampage.