Egyptian group ‘has joined al-Qaida’

AL-QAIDA’S number-two leader has said in a new video that an Egyptian militant group has joined the terror network, the first time that al-Qaida has announced a branch in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation.

The Egyptian group, Gamaa Islamiya, is apparently a revived version of the biggest militant group that waged a campaign of violence in Egypt during the 1990s but was crushed in a government crackdown.

“We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Gamaa Islamiya... with the Al-Qaida group,” Ayman al-Zawahri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida, said in the videotape aired on the Al-Jazeera news network.

It could be aimed to show that al-Qaida has the power to open a new front in attacks at a time of widespread anger in the Arab world over Israel’s offensive in Lebanon.