Al-Qaida leader calls for attacks inside US

MOUN YOUSSEF, AP

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CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaida's leader on Friday marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by calling on Muslims to strike inside the United States, with big attacks or small, using any opportunity they can to "bleed" America financially.

In an audio message released two days after the 12th anniversary of the attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri said America is not a "mythic power" and that the mujahedeen — Islamic holy warriors — can defeat it with attacks "on its own soil."
Al-Zawahri, the successor to Osama bin Laden, used the anniversary to argue that the United States can be defeated by targeting its economy. At the same time, he also addressed the ongoing upheaval in the Arab world. Pointing to a power struggle going on within the rebellion against Syria's regime, he warned jihadi fighters in that country's civil war not "compromise" with more secular or moderate rebel factions, who he said would eventually turn against the al-Qaida-linked radicals.
The message's authenticity could not be independently confirmed. It was posted on a militant website commonly used by al-Qaida.
Al-Zawahri, who is believed to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions, said al-Qaida sympathizers should stage small attacks or a "big strike" against the United States, similar to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, leaving America in "a state of tension" about when and where the next hit would come.

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