Al-Qaida tape calls for Afghan attacks
Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader has issued a new videotape calling on Afghans to rise up against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan in the wake of rioting last month in Kabul.
The video by Ayman al-Zawahri – which would be his sixth this year – was reported Wednesday by IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Va.-based contractor that provides counterterrorism intelligence services to the U.S. government.
“I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands,” al-Zawahri said in Arabic, according to a translation by IntelCenter.
The 3 1/2 -minute tape appears to have been made the day after a May 29 accident in which a U.S. military truck crashed into traffic in Kabul, killing up to five people.
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip
Israeli airstrike kills 2, injures 13
In the second botched Israeli airstrike in Gaza in two days, two people were killed and 13 were wounded when a missile hit a house Wednesday, just hours after grieving Palestinians buried three children killed in a previous attack.
Militants vowed revenge, and Israelis debated the effectiveness of airstrikes that target militants but are taking a mounting toll on innocent Palestinians.
In Wednesday’s attack, Israeli aircraft targeted militants in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis but hit a house instead, killing a man and a woman and wounding at least 13 people.
Washington
Perry urges strike against missile
Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called on President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike against the long-range ballistic missile that U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea is preparing to launch.
In an opinion article in today’s Washington Post, Perry and former Assistant Defense Secretary Ashton Carter argue that if North Korea continues launch preparations, Bush should immediately declare that the United States will destroy the missile before it can be fired.
Perry has been a critic of the Bush administration’s approach to North Korea.
“We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current situation,” Perry and Carter said. “But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature.”