The 40 Americans who have travelled to Somalia to fight alongside Al-Shabaab beg to differ.

(CNS News) — Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) downplayed the threat posed to the U.S. by a Somalia-based terror group, despite a new report showing that as many as 40 Somali-American Muslims have been recruited and trained by al-Shabaab.

“Al Shabaab does not appear to present any danger to this homeland,” Thompson said Wednesday at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee. He acknowledged that the “intelligence community sees a need to monitor Al Shabaab’s activities,” but he said “vigilance must be in direct proportion to the probability and likelihood of the threat.”

At part of the hearing, the committee’s Republican staff — led by Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) — released a report that details al-Shabaab’s activities in the United States, including the recruitment and training of 40 Somali-Americans, 21 of whom are still unaccounted for after traveling to that east African nation.

Republicans committee staffers described Al-Shabaab as “al-Qaeda’s major ally in East Africa.”

No threat?

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The militant group al-Shabab said the man who carried out a suicide bomb attack on a base in Mogadishu this week was a Somali-American, and an official said Thursday that separate clashes with militants in Somalia’s capital left at least 17 civilians dead.

Al-Shabab said on its website Thursday that a 25-year-old man named Abdullahi Ahmed was the suicide bomber who attacked an African Union peacekeeping base in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, on Monday, killing two AU troops and one government soldier.

Ahmed was said to have moved to Somalia from Minnesota two years ago.

The Internet report purported to quote Ahmed before his death saying that he wanted to carry out the attack because of abuses by Christians of Muslim countries.