An Islamist website said on Friday it would soon show a new video of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on United States cities.
The website published a still photograph apparently from the video, which showed bin Laden appearing older compared with available pictures.
The site did not say when the video, produced by al-Qaeda’s media arm al-Sahab, would be issued.
Bin Laden was last seen in a video statement aired to coincide with the November 2004 US presidential election. Since then, he has issued several audio messages, the last in July 2006 in which he vowed al-Qaeda would fight the US anywhere in the world.
White House spokesperson Gordon Johndroe, accompanying President George Bush at an Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in Sydney, said in reaction to the report:
”Six years after 9/11, the arrests in Germany and Denmark this week, and the battles we fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan … remind us of the continuing threat we face from extremists and why we must continue to take the fight to them wherever they are.”
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
US-led forces have been searching for bin Laden since they toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban government after it refused to hand over the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks in the US. – Reuters