Al-Qaeda calls for new attacks

US: In a message released Thursday, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraged extremists everywhere to dream up new ways to attack the West, as the September 11 bombers did nearly 10 years ago, The 35-minute message — a video containing only a still picture of Zawahiri in which he can be heard delivering a speech — was the second in a series titled “A Message of Hope and Glad Tidings to the People of Egypt.” It was produced by Al-Qaeda’s media arm, as-Sahab.

“If we are not able to produce weapons equal to the weapons of the Crusader West, we can sabotage their complex economic and industrial systems and drain their powers, which fight without a cause, until they run away fleeing,” Zawahiri said in the audio message, according to the US-based SITE monitoring service.

He complained that the Muslim world trails behind the West in technological know-how and military weaponry.

“Therefore, the mujahideen (holy warriors) must invent new ways, ways that never dawned on the minds of the West,” Zawahiri continued. “An example of this brave and courageous thinking is the use of airplanes as a mighty weapon, as happened in the blessed invasions in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.”

The 9/11 attacks left nearly 3,000 people dead when Al-Qaeda extremists slammed airliners into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Zawahiri’s first message last week addressed the popular uprising that led Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down after three decades in power. Al-Qaeda has long advocated that violence is the only way to overthrow regimes.

But a handful of countries across the Middle East and North Africa are now roiled by popular revolts against longtime autocratic rulers.

In his lecture, Zawahiri also criticized the Coptic Christian Orthodox Church, accusing it of provoking Muslims and encouraging conflict.

He called the church a “danger” to Egypt, and urged Arab Christians to avoid fighting Al-Qaeda and not look toward the United States and the West as sources of power and influence.

Zawahiri also denied that Al-Qaeda was behind the New Year’s Eve bombing of the Saints Church in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria in Egypt, calling the attack a “consequence” of the church’s transgressions.

WASHINGTON, Friday, AFP