DUBAI, July 1: A purported audio tape by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned Iraq’s Shia community on Saturday of retaliation over attacks on Sunnis and that his group would fight the United States anywhere in the world.

Osama, making his second Internet broadcast in two days, also warned the world community to stay out of Somalia, where Islamists have fought their way to power in Mogadishu.

“We will fight (US) soldiers on the land of Somalia ... and we reserve the right to punish it on its land and anywhere possible,” said the speaker on the tape, sounding like the Saudi-born militant.

No immediate independent verification of the voice was immediately available but the tape was posted on an Internet site used by Islamists.

Osama said the Sunni community in Iraq was being annihilated.

“It is not possible that many of (the Shias) violate, alongside America and its allies, (the Sunni cities of) Ramadi, Falluja, Mosul .... (and) that their areas would be safe from retaliation and harm,” he said.

Osama said he endorsed Abu Hamza al-Muhajir as the new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike on June 7.

On Somalia, he said: “We warn all of the countries in the world not to respond to America by sending international troops to Somalia.”

‘American agent’: The Al Qaeda chief slammed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh as an ‘American agent’ and warned Somalis against accepting his mediation.

“I warn against the tricks of the infidels ... such as Ali Abdullah Saleh’s invitation to you and your adversaries to conduct a dialogue in Sanaa.”

“He is an obedient American agent. Don’t you remember how he was caught with the US destroyer Cole refueling in Aden on its way to blockade the Iraqi people?” he said, referring to the destroyer bombed in the southern Yemeni port of Aden in Oct 2000.

Seventeen US sailors were killed in the suicide attack by militants aboard a small boat packed with explosives, which was claimed by Al Qaeda. —Reuters/AFP