The Horn of Africa is the greatest intelligence void on the global terrorist map, according to analysts.

Since America’s disastrous Black Hawk Down intervention in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in 1993 — the biggest firefight since Vietnam, in which more than 1,000 people died — western presence in parts of the anarchic region has all but disappeared.

However, the London bombings have again cast a spotlight on the area. While the suicide attacks of July 7 involved three British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin, taking the terrorist trail to the Indian subcontinent, the roots of the July 21 bombers can be traced back to Africa.

At least one member of the gang, Yasin Hassan Omar, was born in Somalia, while another, Hussain Osman, originally came from Somalia or Ethiopia. A third member, Muktar Said-Ibrahim, came to Britain from Eritrea. Osman, 27, is now a naturalised Briton, while Omar, 24, who arrived in the UK with his elder sister at the age of 11, was granted indefinite leave to remain in May 2000.

Between 1993 and 2004, almost 46,000 Somalis — excluding dependents — sought to escape famine and conflict in their homeland by claiming asylum in Britain, according to Home Office figures. Of these, more than 30,000 were given asylum or allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds.

Today, Somalia remains a significant source of refugees, providing the third biggest number of asylum applicants in the first quarter of this year. Many Somalis have settled in inner London and other cities, such as Birmingham.

Ibrahim’s family were granted exceptional leave to remain in 1992 after fleeing Eritrea, which was then fighting a bloody war of independence with Ethiopia. Ibrahim, 27, gained British citizenship last September.

Although the July 21 bombers were probably radicalised in Britain, experts remain concerned about Al-Qaeda’s influence in east Africa — the area all the would-be bombers may have looked back to for identity in their formative years.

It was in this region that Osama Bin Laden was based in the early 1990s and his violent brand of Islam is still widespread there. In Sudan he sponsored a network of terrorist training camps, including bases at Lamu and Ras Kiamboni, along the Kenya-Somalia border, and helped to finance attacks against American servicemen based there.

In 1998 Al-Qaeda launched synchronised bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, claiming more than 220 lives. Four years later Islamists attacked a hotel in Mombasa, killing 15 people, and tried to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet with a surface-to-air missile.

In March a team of United Nations investigators obtained photographic evidence of 17 training centres in Kenya. It is believed that they were set up by groups linked to Al-Qaeda with experience of terror camps in Afghanistan.

The few diplomats familiar with Somalia warn that Al-Qaeda, through its local affiliate Al-Itihadd Al-Islamiya, is gaining a stranglehold on Mogadishu. They say that the jihadi group has a new leader, Commander Aden Hashi Ayro, who has organised a Mogadishu Islamist corps of about 100 extremist fighters.

Up until mid-April — the last time any reliable intelligence emerged — they had killed at least 50 supporters of Abdullahi Yusuf, who was chosen by warlords last year to be the country’s president.

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