Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused Iraqi Shiites of waging "genocide" against Sunnis and warned of retaliation, according to an audiotape attributed to him posted on the Internet on Saturday.
In the message, the second in as many days, the speaker also warned against deploying international forces in Somalia and expressed backing for Islamist forces there.
"The unarmed Muslims in the Land of Two Rivers [Iraq] are subjected to a campaign of genocide at the hands of the gangs of grudge and treachery," the speaker said in a reference to Shiites.
Those "gangs" were "deployed in all key posts in the former government of [Ibrahim] al-Jaafari and are present today in the incumbent [Nuri] al-Maliki government," he said of Iraq's previous and incumbent Shiite prime ministers.
"It is not possible that many of the people of the south [who are predominantly Shiites] join America and its allies in attacking [the Sunni bastions of] Fallujah, Ramadi, Baqubah, Mosul, Samarra, Al-Qaim and other cities and villages and [expect] their regions to be spared a reaction and harm," the speaker warned.
The voice on the tape accused the Maliki government of being "treacherous and apostate," saying it was walking in the footsteps of the Jaafari Cabinet.
"The first step required to bring stability to Iraq is to drive out the crusader armies by force, then to punish the leaders of [Shiite] parties" who "lied to the people by telling them that participation in the political process is the way to drive out the occupiers," he added.
The speaker also attacked Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, lumping him with Shiite leaders allegedly deceiving the Iraqi people.
The speaker also endorsed the choice of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer by Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch as successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike June 7.
The new statement was posted after the CIA authenticated a message by the fugitive al-Qaeda leader released on Friday in which he warned that jihad would go on in Iraq despite Zarqawi's killing.
The speaker went on to slam Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh as an "American agent" and warned Somalis against accepting his mediation.
The speaker warned "countries of the world against responding to America and sending international forces to Somalia," vowing to fight any such troops in Somalia and "reserving the right" to "punish" these countries on their own soil "and anywhere possible."
He appealed to Somalis to back Islamic Court forces who took the capital Mogadishu from a US-backed warlord alliance on June .
A White House official said US intelligence services was evaluating the message.
"We are reviewing the tape to determine its authenticity and analyze its content," the White House official said.
"If authentic, the tape demonstrates yet again that Bin Laden and al-Qaeda continue to use the media to justify their dark vision and war against humanity," the official said. Bin Laden and his supporters "offer nothing in their ideology and messages beyond further fighting, conflict and misery," the official said.
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