DUBAI (AFP) — Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for a holy war against North African leaders and their French, Spanish and US allies in an audiotape message Saturday in which he announced a new Libyan arm of the militant network.
In the message released on the internet, he also called on members of Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement to overthrow the Palestinian president, saying he had turned the movement into an "annex of the CIA".
He urged militants to target US, French and Spanish interests in North African countries in the recording, the authenticity of which could not immediately be verified.
"Islamic nation of resistance and jihad (holy war) in the Maghreb, see how your children are uniting under the banner of Islam and jihad against the United States, France and Spain," Zawahiri said.
He also called for the overthrow of the leaders of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco over their support for Washington's so-called war on terror.
"Support... your children in fighting our enemies and cleansing our lands of their slaves (Moamer) Kadhafi, Zine El Abidine (Ben Ali), (President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika and (King) Mohammed VI," he said.
Zawahiri, the Egyptian lieutenant of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, also focused on Palestinian president Abbas as the Fatah leader prepares for a US-sponsored international peace meeting on the Middle East next month.
"I call on those among the members of Fatah and the (Fatah-linked armed) Al-Aqsa Brigades who still have a little dignity to fight their leadership which has transformed their movement into an annex of the CIA and a division of Mossad," Zawahiri said, referring to the Israeli intelligence service.
He said Fatah members should "return to their religion and rally to the support of their brothers, the mujahedeen (fighters), in Palestine and elsewhere in the Muslim world."
Zawahiri called on "nationalist and lay Arabs" to "repent and embrace Islam" because Arab leaders "like Moamer Kadhafi and Mahmud Abbas have sold you to the United States and Israel."
In the same audiotape, Zawahiri said that a Libyan Islamist group had joined the network, the second in north Africa after Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.
"The esteemed leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group have announced their allegiance to the Al-Qaeda network," he said.
The group was formed in Afghanistan in the early 1990s by Libyan militants who had fought the Soviet occupation. Its stated goal is the overthrow of Kadhafi's regime and its replacement with a radical Islamic state.
Several dozen of its members have been arrested and imprisoned in the North African country.
There have been reports of Islamist unrest in the eastern Cyrenaica region of major oil producer Libya in the past but the authorities in Tripoli have always insisted that the violence was the work of criminals.
"We proclaim our alliance with the Al-Qaeda network...to become the faithful soldiers" of Osama bin Laden, said a leader of the group, Abu Laith Al-Libi, as part of the same recording.
The North African branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility in September for a suicide attack near Lakhdaria in Algeria which injured nine people, including a two French nationals and an Italian.
The attack came shortly after a previous Zawahiri message calling for attacks to rid the Maghreb of French and Spanish interests.
The French foreign ministry said it was taking the threat "very seriously" and immediately instructed its diplomats to tighten security measures.
North Africa has seen a raft of Al-Qaeda linked attacks in recent years, ranging from a suicide truck bombing which killed 21 people in Djerba, Tunisia in 2002 to a wave of attacks which killed 45 people in May 2003 in Casablanca, Morocco.
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