The US Army psychiatrist who shot 13 people at America’s biggest base had being trying to leave the military for six months and had complained of anti-Muslim discrimination from comrades, his family told The Times today.

Major Nidal Hasan, opened fire with two pistols at his comrades at Fort Hood in Texas yesterday before being shot by a female police officer. Major Hasan, 39, is in a stable condition, on a ventilator.

The massacre prompted revulsion and anger on base today, where the shooting spree was quickly portrayed as an act of Islamic terrorism.

The base commander, Lieutenant-General Bob Cone said that witnesses to the shooting heard the Major shout out "Allahu Akbar" as he launched his attack. The proclamation is an Arabic prayer meaning "God is Great" but has come to be seen as a Jihadi calling cry.

More than 30 people were wounded, 28 of whom were still in hospital today.

Major Hasan was born in northern Virginia, close to Washington, to parents who had immigrated to America from a small town near Jerusalem.

In an interview with The Times today in the West Bank town of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, his cousin, Mohammed Hasan, said that Major Hasan had engaged a lawyer to try and leave the army.

“For six months he’d been trying to get out of the army,” said Mohammed, an unemployed 24-year-old.

“I think because he’s a Muslim he didn’t want to go to Afghanistan or Iraq, and he didn’t want to expose himself to violence and death,” he told The Times.

Mohammed recalled a pleasant young man, curious about his homeland, who stayed in al-Bireh for several weeks 12 years ago, and was happy to have graduated and to be joining the army, in which his uncle and cousins had also served.

“We never noticed any strange behaviour or abnormality,” Mohammed recalled. “We never discussed politics, he was just very happy to be here.”

But Mohammed said he had heard that from his American relatives that Major Hasan had been badly treated recently by his comrades in the army. “He was being treated like a Muslim, like and Arab, rather than an American, he was being discriminated against,” Mohammed said. “But this was not enough to do what he did,” he added.

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