Osama declares war on ‘infidel’ Musharraf in new video

“So Pervez, his ministers, his soldiers and those who help him are all accomplices in spilling the blood of those of the Muslims who have been killed. He who helps him knowingly and willingly is an infidel like him,” bin Laden was quoted as saying on another US monitoring website, siteinstitute.org.

Neither site posted a full transcript of his comments. Al-Qaeda-linked websites had earlier announced the Saudi born militant would declare war on Musharraf and the Pakistani army.

More than 100 of Ghazi’s followers were killed in an assault on the Lal Masjid, a mosque and school complex. The group is sympathetic to the Taliban, who were removed from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces.

Earlier on Thursday, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to fight the United States and its allies around the world, and praised the operations of Islamist militants in a new video.

In the video made to mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Zawahri said: “Stand, o nation of Islam, under the victorious banner of the Prophet and campaign against the crusader banner of US President George W Bush.

“Go forth to the mujahideen, bear them arms, back them, defend them and don’t be intimidated by the power of America for these two blessed attacks have revealed that it is a power of iron and fire, with no faith or morals or principle.”

Zawahri, who praised the actions of al Qaeda-linked groups fighting in Afghanistan, north Africa, Somalia, Chechnya and Iraq, also called on Pakistanis to avenge the killing of Ghazi.

“Let the Pakistani army know that the killing of Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his students and the demolition of his mosque and two madrasas have soaked the history of the Pakistani army in shame which can only be washed away by retaliation against the killers of Abdul Rashid Ghazi,” he said.

Zawahri also called on Muslims in Sudan to fight a force of African Union and UN peacekeepers set to deploy to the volatile Western region of Darfur. He said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had abandoned his Muslim brothers and no longer deserved their protection.

“The mujahideen sons must organise jihad against the forces invading Darfur as their brothers organised the jihadi resistance in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia,” he said.

Bin Laden and Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan, a mountainous, inaccessible region that US intelligence has described as a safe haven for al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies.

The latest audiotape was the third posting featuring a new message from bin Laden to appear this month. The messages, issued by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab, were timed to mark the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington in which almost 3,000 people were killed.