DUBAI (AFP) — Al-Qaeda has released a video featuring a senior commander who was rumoured to have been killed in Pakistan in July, threatening more attacks after a suicide bombing on the Danish embassy in Islamabad, according to the SITE group which monitors Islamist websites.
"We have warned previously -- and we warn once more -- the Crusader states which insult, mock and defame our Prophet and Koran in their media and occupy our lands, steal our treasure and kill our brothers that we will exact revenge at the appropriate time and place," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said in the video, SITE reported on Thursday.
The June embassy bombing killed six Pakistanis and came amid anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed first printed in Danish newspapers in 2005.
There were reports that Yazid was killed in a July air strike on a hideout in a tribal region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, but the identity of the slain militant was never confirmed.
Yazid, an Egyptian Al-Qaeda commander based in Afghanistan, was identified by the 9/11 Commission as the group's chief financial manager.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said the video, released by Al-Qaeda's media arm Al-Sahab, shows the Saudi suicide bomber who carried out the attack and an "animation" of the bombing itself.
Yazid said the embassy attack "is but the beginning...if you don't end your errant ways and aggression," SITE said in a translation of the video message, adding that the date it was recorded was not known.
"As for my final message to the worshippers of the cross in Denmark, I tell them... this isn't the first nor the last retaliation," said the man identified as the bomber, Abu Ghareeb al-Makki. "Allah willing, we will wipe you from the face of the earth."
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Pakistan has denied that one of its nationals was involved in the embassy bombing.
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