November 27, 2008	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 28, 1429

MADRID, Nov 26: The Taliban have threatened to stage attacks on five western countries deploying troops in Afghanistan in a video discovered by Spanish security forces, a local radio station said Wednesday.

The United States, Spain, France, Denmark and Australia are warned in the 42-minute video along with Israel, news radio Cadena Ser said.

It “threatens Nato and US troops with attacks against their interests inside and outside of Afghan territory if they do not withdraw from Afghanistan,” the radio said.

Cadena Ser said the video was distributed on Nov 14, five days after two Spanish soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack on their convoy in western Afghanistan.

In the opening minutes of the video, posted on the radio station’s website, the flags of the six threatened nations and that of the United Nations are suddenly engulfed in flames and then replaced by a solitary Islamic flag.

A man who is thought to be a Taliban leader and surrounded by four armed men, is then shown speaking in Dari, a dialect of Persian widely spoken in Afghanistan. The faces of the five men are covered.

Spanish security forces have given ‘total credibility’ to the video, which is believed to have been produced in northern Afghanistan and then broadcast on a jihadi television channel, the radio station said.

It was not clear when the video was recorded.

The authors of the video belong to an ethnically mixed group that is directed by the leader of the Taliban, Shaikh Abd al-Basit, and are considered “very aggressive and dangerous”, Cadena Ser reported.—AFP