FBI Director Cass Patel announced today that he has launched a terrorism investigation, following the serious injury of two National Guard soldiers in a shooting yesterday in Washington.

This is an ongoing terrorism investigation, Kas Patel said at a press conference.

He added that the suspect in the attack had worked in Afghanistan with coalition forces. We are fully investigating that aspect of his past, to include any known associates of his who are either abroad or here in the United States. This is what a broad international terrorism investigation looks like, the FBI chief stressed.

American media reported earlier that the Afghan national who shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington had worked with the US armed forces in Afghanistan before the US government transferred him to the United States.

According to Fox News, the suspect, aged 29, had worked with the US military and the CIA in Afghanistan and arrived in the US a month after the hasty withdrawal of US forces from that country during the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, in August 2021.

Fox News cites CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to whom the suspect had worked with the United States in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, where one of the most important US military bases was located.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Janine Piro, said the two soldiers who were shot were 20-year-old Sarah Backstrom and 24-year-old Andrew Wolf.

Piro told reporters that the two underwent surgery and their health condition remains critical.