Israel Matzav

Yemen al-Qaeda wants to block shipping to Israel via Red Sea

"The Christians, the Jews, and the treacherous apostate rulers have pounced on you ... you have no other way out from this plight other than to wage jihad," the wing's deputy leader, Saeed al-Shehri, said in an audio tape posted on a website often used by Islamist groups.

Shehri, a former inmate of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay from Saudi Arabia, was one of 30 al Qaeda members that Yemen claimed to have killed in an air strike in December but this was later denied by the global militant network.

Shehri also said the Yemen-based wing's failed bomb attack on the plane to Detroit on December 25 had been carried out in coordination with network leader Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attack in January, weeks after al Qaeda in Yemen said it was behind it.

Shehri called on Somalia's Islamist al Shabaab insurgents to help block a narrow strait at the mouth of the Red Sea that separates Yemen from the Horn of Africa.

"At such a time the Bab (al Mandab) will be closed and that will tighten the noose on the Jews (Israel), because through it America supports them by the Red Sea," Shehri said.

The area across the strait from Yemen is far from al Shabaab's territory.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:31 AM