Send all troops, says al-Qaeda

January 24, 2007 04:00am

AL-QAEDA'S second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has defiantly mocked US President George W. Bush's plan to send extra troops to Iraq, saying he should send his entire army to be annihilated.

The online video message coincided yesterday with new intelligence that the former al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, planned to send militants to the US on student visas to carry out attacks on US soil.

But the plot, which came to light during a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq early last year, never got off the ground and Zarqawi was killed later in an attack by US forces, officials said.

Yesterday, al-Qaeda also claimed to have shot down a US helicopter on Saturday.
On Saturday, 25 US troops died, including 12 in the helicopter crash, in one of the highest single-day death tolls since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

But the al-Qaeda claim came only after a US official said the helicopter might have been hit by a shoulder-fired missile.
In the group's most recent video, Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, repeatedly pokes fun at Mr Bush's plan for Iraq, as well as the US-led mission to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban.

"In his latest speech, Bush said in his ramblings that he would send 20,000 of his soldiers to Iraq. I ask him: why send only 20,000 soldiers? Why don't you send 50,000 or 100,000?" Zawahiri says in the 15-minute recording.

"Don't you know that the dogs of Iraq are impatient to devour the carcasses of your soldiers?
"On the contrary, you must send your entire army to be annihilated at the hands of themujaheddin so that the whole world will be rid of your wickedness."

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