More than 4000 foreign fighters have been killed in Iraq while fighting US-led forces and the American-backed government, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq said in an audio tape issued on the internet today.
“More than 4000 muhajir (foreign fighters) and many more of the supporters of righteousness (Iraqi fighters) have given their blood to Iraq,” said the speaker, identified as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.
Iraqi al-Qaida chief calls for kidnapping foreigners
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, chief of the al-Qaida in Iraq, called on his followers to capture foreigners in a bid to free a Muslim cleric jailed in the United States, said an audio tape issued on Internet Thursday.
“I call on every holy fighter in Iraq to strive during this holy month (of Ramadan) … to capture some Western Christians to exchange them for our imprisoned sheikh,” al-Masri said in the tape whose authenticity could not be verified.
He was referring to the Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was jailed in the United States since 1995 over charges linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
Al-Masri also urged Muslims to make the holy month of Ramadan a “month of holy war”. Ramadan began last weekend across the Muslim world.
Al-Qaida seeks to recruit nuclear scientists
The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, in an audio message posted on a website yesterday, called for explosives experts and nuclear scientists to join his group’s holy war against the West.
“The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them,†said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
They are bleeding, and rather badly at that, but they are desperate and dangerous and always looking to up the stakes.
In the Bullpen‘s Chad Evans has a good bit more analysis on the tape and also looks at an apparent splintering in Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi “army.”