LONDON, Feb 16: British Somalis trained in Somalian terrorist camps are now said to be returning ‘home’ to add to the headache of British Security Services already overextended keeping tabs on British Pakistanis believed to be returning from Pakistani training camps.

“Pakistan rightly gets the most attention in terms of external threats,” a senior counter-terrorism source said. “But we believe we should focus more on the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular.”

According to a report in the Times on Monday, intelligence analysts are worried that these Somali trained terrorists may attempt to launch attacks in this country or use the kudos from having trained and fought in Somalia to try to attract new recruits.

The issue was raised by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, in his first interview last month, said the newspaper report.

In the US, the outgoing head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, has said that Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in late 2006 “catalysed” expatriate Somalis around the world.

An investigation for Channel 4 News also revealed that a suicide bomber who grew up in Ealing was thought to have blown himself up in an attack in Somalia that killed more than 20 soldiers.

The incident is the first reported case involving a Somali based in Britain and will add to pressure on Scotland Yard and the Home Office to tackle the problem within the Somali community, which, at about 250,000 people, is the biggest in Europe.

Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert who runs the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, told Channel 4 News: “The numbers I hear [going from Britain to Somalia] are 50, 60 or 70, but in reality we don’t know. You don’t need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat.”

Most Somalis in Britain entered the country as asylum-seekers within the past 20 years. They include Yasin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the botched bombing of the London Underground on July 21, 2005.

An audio message from Osama bin Laden last month urged Muslims to send money or go themselves to fight in Somalia. “Such references are usually a good indicator,” Dr Neumann said. “The place is seen as an opportunity, from a jihadist point of view.”

Some Somali leaders say their community – already associated with gang and knife crime – is being unfairly targeted. But outside a West London mosque last week, several Somalis were adamant that they were entitled to fight for their homeland. “If American troops can go from Arizona to Iraq then someone can leave this area and go to Somalia,” one said.