WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda's supremo in Yemen - Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland - has warned Americans of a bloodier jihadist struggle to come following the terror mastermind's killing by US commandos.
The warning from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula came as top US Senator John Kerry announced a trip to mend fences with a resentful Pakistan, where bin Laden was gunned down, but also to seek answers on how he came to be there.
Pakistan Wednesday saw the first possible violent reaction to bin Laden's death, as drive-by attackers threw grenades at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Karachi, the country's biggest city.
A local official said authorities were taking measures fearing a "big attack" to come.
AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahishi said in a statement posted on an Islamist website that the "ember of jihad (holy war) is brighter" following the May 2 killing of bin Laden, according to the SITE monitoring group.
The Yemen-based fugitive warned Americans not to fool themselves that the "matter will be over" with the killing of bin Laden, the Saudi-born architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"Do not think of the battle superficially... What is coming is greater and worse, and what is awaiting you is more intense and harmful," Wahishi said, according to a SITE translation.
"We promise Allah that we will remain firm in the covenant and that we will continue the march, and that the death of the sheikh will only increase our persistence to fight the Jews and the Americans in order to take revenge." The United States has warned of the threat posed by Islamist militancy in Yemen, the homeland of bin Laden's father, and has warned of the potential for the country to become a new staging ground for Al-Qaeda.
AQAP was born of a January 2009 merger between the Saudi and Yemeni Al-Qaeda branches. It claimed a failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound US airliner in December 2009 and was accused in October of sending parcel bombs addressed to US synagogues that were disguised inside computer printers.
Four days after bin Laden was killed in the US raid on his sprawling compound about two hours' drive from the Pakistani capital Islamabad, a US drone attack targeted US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi in southern Yemen.
The cleric, who Washington says has strong links to al-Qaeda, survived the attack but two AQAP members were killed.
In Karachi, two men on a motorcycle threw two grenades at the heavily fortified Saudi consulate and escaped despite coming under fire from security guards, officials said.
"We are seeing this incident in the present context," provincial government official Sharfuddin Memon told AFP. "It could be a reaction of the Osama incident."
"We fear that desperate elements are planning to launch a big attack. We are taking precautionary measures in this regard," he warned.
Bin Laden's killing has not ignited mass protests in Pakistan, where more than 4,240 people have died in bomb attacks blamed on the radical Taliban and al-Qaeda in the last four years, but small gatherings have vowed revenge.
Saudi Arabia expelled bin Laden in 1991 and later revoked his nationality.
The government in Riyadh, which is allied to the authorities in Islamabad, last week welcomed his killing as a boost to international anti-terror efforts.
But the discovery of bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad after a decade-long manhunt has plunged testy relations between Islamabad and Washington deeper into trouble.
Pakistan is an uneasy ally in the US-led war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan, and receives billions of dollars in US aid annually.
Senator Kerry said that when he traveled to Pakistan early next week he hoped to resolve some of the puzzles lingering since the Al-Qaeda leader was finally unearthed and shot dead by elite US Navy SEALs.
"There are some serious questions, obviously, there are some serious issues that we've just got to find a way to resolve together," Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters.
But the Democratic ally of President Barack Obama also stressed the need to discuss the aftermath of bin Laden's death "and how we get on the right track" with Pakistan. Islamabad welcomed the visit as an opportunity to ease mistrust.
There are mounting allegations that bin Laden evaded capture for years thanks to the complicity or the incompetence of Pakistan's authorities, including its vaunted intelligence agency.
But Pakistan's civilian government, while vowing a full investigation, has angrily dismissed the allegations and its powerful military has warned of unspecified reprisals if another unilateral US raid were to occur.
Pakistan opposition leader Nawaz Sharif rejected the internal military probe.
"We must get to the bottom of the issue. If not, then history will not forgive us," he said, lashing out at the government and the military, and calling for an independent inquiry.
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