DUBAI: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group that claimed a botched Christmas Day attack on a US airliner, on Monday called for more American targets to be hit around the world. American and Crusader interests are everywhere and their agents are moving everywhere, AQAP s number two Said Al-Shihri said in an audio message posted on the internet. Attack them and eliminate as many enemies as you can, the leader said in the statement also picked up by the US-based SITE monitoring service. SITE reported in December that Shihri, a Saudi, was freed from the American war on terror prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was promptly elevated to the senior AQAP ranks. The US monitors quoted Shihri as saying Yemeni Muslims must be united in this battle front and support the mujahedeen, and urged Muslims elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula to do the same and embrace jihad. Shihri urged Yemeni tribes, especially Al-Awalak, to fight the agents who are plotting with the Crusaders against the Muslims. Al-Awalak is the tribe of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the radical Yemeni-American cleric with reported links to US Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who went on a deadly shooting rampage in Texas in November, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspected of trying to blow up a US passenger jet on December 25. We salute the glorious invasion of Farouk, Shihri said. We repeat what our Sheikh Osama said, that America will not dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. He was referring to an audio message last month apparently by Osama bin Laden, in which the Al-Qaeda chief warned US President Barack Obama of further attacks and called Abdulmutallab a hero. Shihri also criticized the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which plays the most important role in the region... to protect the oil interests of the Jews and the Christians. The criminals of Al-Saud family are carrying out a war on the Muslims as proxies for the Zionist-Crusaders, he added of the Saudi ruling family. An Al-Qaeda aim was to gain control of the strategic Bab Al-Mandab strait which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, Shihri said. He emphasized the importance of Bab Al-Mandab which if we, God willing, controlled it and brought it back to the house of Islam, would be a great victory and would give us great influence. Then, he said, we could close the door and tighten the noose on the Jews, because through (Bab Al-Mandab), America brings support to them by the Red Sea. He thanked Somali Al-Shebab militants for offering to support AQAP, and called for cooperation in our next battle against the leader of the infidels, America, for you and we are on the shores of Bab Al-Mandab. At the beginning of January, a senior Shebab official pledged to help AQAP by sending reinforcements to Yemen. The announcement came shortly after Sanaa stepped up its campaign against AQAP, backed by US intelligence, as international pressure mounted following the failed airliner attack. Speaking on Sunday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that while a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat, the threat from Al-Qaeda was greater. I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks, she said of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. She cautioned that Al-Qaeda was evolving to become more creative, more flexible and more agile. They are, unfortunately, a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings and we just have to stay alert, Clinton said.
