HORN OF AFRICA: VIDEO ADDS TO EVIDENCE OF AL-QAEDA'S PRESENCE
Osama bin Laden whose al-Qaeda network is gaining a foothold in the Horn of Africa
Rome, 11 August (AKI) - A video purporting to show a deadly al-Qaeda attack in Eritrea as well as an Italian intelligence report describing al-Qaeda-linked activities in Somalia, add to mounting evidence of a strong al-Qaeda presence in the Horn of Africa. In the video - a copy of which has been obtained by Adnkronos International (AKI) and which will be broadcast on Italian state television, RAI, on Thursday night - a group calling itself the Movement for Eritrean Islamic Jihad, appeals for support and funding, apparently to potential benefactors in the Persian Gulf.
Footage includes what the narrator describes as a mission by the group to seize arms: militants open fire on a vehicle, kill its driver and make off with a weapons haul. Other sections of the 38-minute long video contain threats against the Eritrean government, which is described as an ally of Israel and the "Crusaders," a term commonly used by Islamist extremists to describe the West.
The relatively well-filmed video, produced by the Islamic Media Centre, which has distributed other al-Qaeda audio and video material on the Internet, is accompanied by voice-over narration, mostly in Arabic with some dialogue between the militants in local Eritrean language such as Tigrinya. Target practice and other military training by the militants in a desert-like setting also appear.
The airing of the video in Italy coincides with the publishing, on Thursday by the Rome daily, La Repubblica, of excerpts from an Italian intelligence services report on al-Qaeda-linked activity by a Somalia-based group called al-Ittihad al-Islami, or Islamic Union.
The group, which was thought to have been largely inactive over recent years, is now suspected of planning attacks on Western targets including oil fields run by Italian and US companies in Libya, the intelligence report warns.
Al-Ittihad al-Islami, was formed in 1995 by Islamic militants - veterans of the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan who sheltered in Somalia after fleeing Sudan and Yemen - and consists of some 1,500 active members and over 3,000 followers, the report said.
Italian intelligence operators have noted frequent meetings in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, between Al-Ittihad al-Islami and a radical Islamic cleric, Mohammed Abdulbari, as well as Salah Ali Slah Nabhan, a prime suspect behind the terrorist attacks in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002. The al-Qaeda-claimed attacks, included a suicide bombing at an Israeli-owned resort hotel in Mombasa that killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis and, on the same day, an usccessful missile attack on an Israeli charter jet leaving the Kenyan city. (continues)
