Al Qaida calls for more attacks

Al Qaida calls for more attacks

(UKPA) –

Al Qaida's most active branch in the Middle East has called for more attacks on US embassies to "set the fires blazing", seeking to use the outrage over an anti-Muslim film which sparked a wave of protests that swept 20 countries.

Senior Muslim religious authorities issued their strongest pleas yet against resorting to violence, trying to defuse Muslim anger over the film, a day after new attacks on US and Western embassies that left at least eight protesters dead.

The top cleric in US ally Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdel-Aziz al-Sheik, condemned the film but, urging Muslims not to be "dragged by anger" into violence, said it could not really hurt Islam.

Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the Sunni Muslim world's pre-eminent religious institution, Egypt's Al-Azhar, backed peaceful protests but said Muslims should counter the film by reviving Islam's moderate ideas.

In the Egyptian capital Cairo, where the first protests against the film that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad erupted, police finally succeeded in clearing away protesters who had clashed with security forces for days near the US embassy. Police arrested 220 people and a concrete wall was erected across the road leading to the embassy.

No significant protests were reported in the Middle East on Saturday; the only report of violence linked to the film came from Australia, where riot police clashed with about 200 protesters at the US consulate in Sydney.

In his weekly radio and internet address, US president Barack Obama paid tribute to the four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, who were killed in an armed attack on the US consulate in Benghazi this week. "I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths. We stand for religious freedom. And we reject the denigration of religion - including Islam," Mr Obama said. "Yet there is never any justification for violence. There is no religion that condones the targeting of innocent men and women."

But the Yemen-based al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, considered the most dangerous of the terror network's branches to the US, called the killing of Mr Stevens "the best example" for those attacking embassies to follow. "What has happened is a great event, and these efforts should come together in one goal, which is to expel the embassies of America from the lands of the Muslims," the group said.

It called on protests to continue in Muslim nations "to set the fires blazing at these embassies". It also called on "our Muslim brothers in Western nations to fulfil their duties in supporting God's prophet ... because they are the most capable of reaching them and vexing them".

So far there has been no evidence of a direct role by al Qaida in the protests.

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