Al-Qaida number two calls for attacks on France

Al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for attacks against France in a video and designated an Algerian insurgency movement as the terrorist organisation’s armed wing in the European country, a terror expert said today.

Anne Giudicelli, who watched the one-hour-16-minute-long video on the internet, said Al-Zawahiri identified the Algerian group as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC.

He promised the organisation would be a “bone in the throat of American and French crusaders”.

“This union … will put fear in the hearts of the traitors and the sons of the French heathens,” al-Zawahiri said in the video, which was released on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

It was the first time al-Qaida has officially given its blessing to a union with the GSPC, Giudicelli said.

“From now on the links are official, legitimate, and they are taking part in the same combat,” said Giudicelli, a former French diplomat who now runs Paris-based consultancy firm, Terrorisc.

Le Figaro newspaper quoted French security experts as saying there may be as many as several dozen supporters of the Algerian group in the country.