Israel blames al-Qaeda

2004-10-08 10:30

Jerusalem - Israel on Friday blamed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network for a series of anti-Israeli bomb attacks against in Egypt's Sinai peninsula that left at least 19 people dead and another 38 missing.

"According to our first information, it appears to be an international terror attack with the hallmarks of al-Qaeda," Israel's deputy defence minister Zeev Boim said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom echoed the accusations and told army radio: "al-Qaeda threatens all the countries, including Arab ones that according to it have close relations with Israel or the Western world."

"This would explain the recent attacks in Morocco, Istanbul or Riyadh," Shalom said of a series of deadly bombings in those cities.

Calls for attacks

"The struggle against terrorism is worldwide and we are far from having won it because organisations, not states, are behind it."

The attacks occurred late on Thursday as the Red Sea coast of the southern Sinai was packed with Israeli holidaymakers celebrating the final day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

Earlier this month al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called on young Muslims to attack Israeli, Western and Asian interests across the world, specifically mentioning Egypt.

"It's the era of Muslim resistance, after the (Arab) governments submitted to the Zionist occupant. We should learn the lesson of Chechnya, Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine," a voice attributed to Zawahiri said on a tape aired by Al-Jazeera on October 1.

"Don't wait for the American, British, French, South Korean, Hungarian and Polish forces to enter Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria to start the resistance," the speaker added. "We should start the resistance from now."

Zawahiri, a 53-year-old Egyptian surgeon, is bin Laden's right-hand man and reportedly his personal physician.

He was last heard in a videotape broadcast by the Qatar-based news channel on September 9 in which he forecast a United States defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there had been unconfirmed rumours that he may have been killed.

But a US intelligence official said then that CIA analysts had concluded that the voice on the October 1 broadcast was indeed that of Zawahiri.

- AFP