SILVER SPRING (Maryland) - ISLAM is 'not responsible' for the bloodbath at an army base in Texas where Muslim-American army Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly gunned down 13 people, the prayer leader at the mosque where the officer regularly worshipped said on Friday.

'We offer our condolences and prayers to the families that have a person who died,' said Imam Mohammed Abdullahi over loud-speakers that carried the weekly Muslim prayer to several hundred worshippers gathered at the mosque.

'Islam is not responsible,' he stressed.

Many of the worshippers who had come to the mosque in this suburb of Washington knew Hasan or had seen him at Friday prayer, which he attended regularly when he lived in the Washington area. To them, the news that he had allegedly opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon and a handgun in a crowded troop processing centre on the sprawling Fort Hood base in Texas, mowing down 13 people and wounding 30 others, came as a shock.

Imam Abdullahi recalled seeing Hasan at Friday prayer for the last time in June, and Akhtar Khan, a worshipper at the mosque, described the army psychiatrist as 'a peaceful person, very quiet.

'He would just come and pray,' he said as worshippers at the mosque struggled to understand why Hasan, a specialist in combat stress, snapped and opened fire in a troop processing centre in Fort Hood that was packed with soldiers preparing to deploy overseas. -- AFP