The alleged murderer of the Fort Hood shootings was back on trial Thursday after his standby attorneys abruptly halted the trial a day earlier.

The suspect, 42-year-old Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan, killed 13 and injured more than 30 others at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas in November 2009. He is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the massacre.

Hasan was allowed Thursday to continue representing himself after the judge ordered his standby attorneys to stay on as advisers, local TV ABC13 reported.

Hasan's standby attorneys accused their client on Wednesday of deliberately charting a course toward a conviction and death sentence which violates their rules of professional conduct, bringing the courtroom into an early recession.

Hasan has chosen to act as his own attorney during the military trial at Fort Hood, though he has defense attorneys on standby if he needs them.

On Tuesday, he told jurors during a less-than-two-minute opening statement that the evidence would "clearly show" he was the shooter.

The American-born Muslim defendant had wanted to argue that he shot US troops to protect Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, but the judge forbade him from using that defense.

The long-awaited trial was held in the heavily-fortified military base where armed guards stood in doorways and stacks of shock-absorbing barriers were piled around the courthouse. Hasan was tried before jurors in a wheelchair as he was shot in the back during the rampage and was paralyzed from the waist down.

Hasan faces the death penalty if convicted.