Pakistani officials say California shooter Malik attended religious school

But he said investigators are still trying to establish when, where and by whom they were influenced.

He also said the couple had taken target practice at ranges in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with one session held within days of the rampage.

The couple opened fire with assault rifles Wednesday on a holiday luncheon for Farook’s colleagues.

It was not immediately clear whether Farook attended the late-2014 session on what to do when a gunman invades the workplace, San Bernardino County spokeswoman Felisa Cardona said.

Corwin Porter, health department assistant director, said Monday that the room didn’t provide much protection.

President Barack Obama said in a prime-time address Sunday night that the attack was an “act of terrorism created to kill innocent people”.

Staff at the Al-Huda Institute in Multan, the city where Malik attended university from 2007-13, said on Monday that she was a regular visitor in her free time.

The Al-Huda seminary has no known links to extremists but its founder has been criticized for promoting a conservative strain of Islam, according to the AP.

Hashmi says “it seems” Malik “was unable to understand the attractive message” of the Quran.

Unlike other such seminaries, it mainly targets Pakistan’s influential middle and upper classes, often holding religious study circles inside members’ houses.

The organization said that it does not have any links to any extremist regime. Pakistan, which supports Islamic militants battling archrival India in the disputed region of Kashmir and is widely believed to have ties to insurgents in Afghanistan, has long turned a blind eye to institutions that teach radical interpretations of Islam.

She said she wasn’t even completely convinced that Malik could have carried out the heinous act, but noted that she might have become radicalized in Saudi Arabia.

But, he added: “A country or a national or a religion can not be held responsible for a crime committed by an individual and I appreciate a wise approach adopted by the United States administration on the issue”.

“It was a two-year course, but she did not finish it”, Muqadas told AFP.

Malik passed several government background checks and entered the U.S.in July 2014 on a K-1 visa, which allowed her to travel to the country and get married within 90 days of arrival.

“According to our records, this girl didn’t complete the course”, Farrukh Chaudhry, a spokeswoman for the school, told AP.

She obtained her place as a pharmacy student at Bahauddin Zakariya University under a quota system that reserves spots for the children of expatriate Pakistanis – suggesting that she had indeed grown up overseas, the report said.

“I have talked to her teachers, her classmates, and everybody says she was a hardworking, friendly, helpful and obedient student”, Chaudhry said, adding that “no one ever noticed any signs of radicalization”.

As a tide of Islamist violence washed across Pakistan in recent years, Bahauddin Zakariya University in the southern city of Multan struggled to halt spreading intolerance, with mixed results.

A classmate, who did not wished to be identified, said she lived on campus in a hostel during her first two years.

Her father, Gulzar Malik, who was estranged from relatives in Pakistan, became more religious after the move to Saudi Arabia. Pakistani police and intelligence agents have searched the house where she lived there, seizing documents, family photo albums and a laptop belonging to Malik’s sister. But her attendance offers fresh insight into Malik’s journey towards Islamic extremism, which likely began with her upbringing in Saudi Arabia, continued during her time as a student in Pakistan and culminated with her swearing allegiance to the Islamic State group shortly before embarking on her killing spree.

Friends and teachers of Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani woman accused along with her husband of shooting dead 14 people in California last week, have expressed shock and astonishment over the incident, saying that she was quite “normal” and a “hard working” student at Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU).

The FBI said Friday that it is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism.