Special to WorldTribune.com

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said [Omar] Mateen had pledged allegiance to the [Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS)], according to officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

ISIL recently declared online that its followers should mount attacks to mark the approach of the holy month of Ramadan. The message came in an audio recording from spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, released in May. …“Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready…to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers…especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America,” Adnani said.

Mateen had a valid firearms license in Florida and worked as a security guard at a facility for juvenile deliquents. Armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a handgun, Mateen entered Pulse club around 2 a.m. Sunday morning and began shooting. After most of the 320 people there escaped, Mateen took hostages from a group that was hiding in a bathroom. Shortly before 6 a.m., a SWAT unit breached the club and engaged Mateen in what’s being called a protracted gun battle. Mateen was killed.

The deadliest single-person mass murder in American history before Orlando occured in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when a man bombed a school, killing 44 people.

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  ISIL’s Ramadan message to backers in U.S.: ‘Make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers’