Al-Qaeda calls for a new terror attacks on U.S. to ‘bleed America economically’

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged Muslims to launch attacks on 'American soil' to lead up to a 'war on its own land'.

In an audio speech released online a day after the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, al-Zawahiri urged sustained attacks on the U.S. which he said would 'bleed America economically' by forcing the country to spend large amounts on defence.

And he encouraged Muslims to seize any opportunity to land 'a large strike' on the U.S. even if this took years of patience, according to a translation on the U.S. SITE monitoring service.

Al-Zawahiri, who was Osama Bin Laden's physician and right-hand man and tops America's list of 'most wanted' terrorists released in 2001 with a £15million bounty on his head, is credited by many as having been the brains behind the 9/11 attacks and those on the London transport system in July 2005 that left 52 people dead.

Western counter-terrorism chiefs have warned that the broadcast could provide fuel for radicalised 'lone wolves' who might have had no direct contact with al Qaeda as much as operatives like those who carried out complex plots like the September 11 strikes.

Al-Zawahiri was quoted as saying in the speech: 'We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure.'

Keeping the U.S. in such a state of tension and anticipation only required a few disparate attacks 'here and there', he said

'As we defeated it in the gang warfare in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we should follow it with ...war on its own land. These disparate strikes can be done by one brother or a few of the brothers.'

In his audio speech, al-Zawahiri said Muslims should refuse to buy goods from America and its allies, as such spending only helped to fund U.S. military action in Muslim lands.

He added that Muslims should abandon the U.S. dollar and replace it with the currency of nations that did not attack Muslims.

Al-Zawahiri spoke approvingly of the bombing of the Boston Marathon in April, in which three people were killed and 264 injured, and which U.S. authorities believe was carried out by two ethnic Chechen Muslim brothers.

Al-Zawahiri described the bombing as part of al-Qaeda's violent transnational campaign of jihad, or holy war, against U.S. interests.

'The Boston incident confirms to the Americans ... that they are not facing individuals, organizations or groups, but they are facing an uprising Ummah (Muslim community), that rose in jihad to defend its soul, dignity and capabilities,' he said.

'What the American regime refuses to admit is that al-Qaeda is a message before it was an organization.'

Al-Zawahiri, suspected by many security specialists to be living in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, added that al-Qaeda's message to Muslims was that they had to defend their dignity if they wanted to be liberated'.

Source: Dailymail.uk.co