U.S. probing Islamic State claims that it was behind Texas cartoon attack

U.S. investigators were looking into claims by the Islamic State militant group that it was behind a failed attack on a Texas exhibition of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in which two gunmen were killed, but officials said on Tuesday that they doubted the group’s direct involvement. The Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State (IS) said on its official online radio station that “two soldiers of the caliphate” carried out the attack on Sunday in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. The White House said it was too early to tell if the two gunmen killed in Garland were tied to the Islamic State.

I believe that perhaps [shooting suspect Elton Simpson] might have just snapped when he heard about the cartoon contest.

Kristina Sitton, a Phoenix attorney who defended Simpson in the case, to CNN

One U.S. official said that investigators believed it was possible, if not likely, that IS played an “inspirational” rather than “operational” role in the attack. That would mean that the shooters may have immersed themselves in items posted online by IS and other groups, such as al-Qaida, in the Arabian Peninsula intended to incite violence, but that the group played no role in directing an attack on the Texas event. U.S. investigators were going through the shooters’ computers and communications devices, officials said.

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