Thursday, July 27 2006 17:51 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Dubai: Al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri warned the network would carry out attacks against Israel and its US backers to avenge the Israeli offensives against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, in a videotape aired today by Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera.

"We cannot watch these rockets raining down their fire on our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and remain inactive and submissive," Zawahiri said in the footage.

It was the first reaction by Al-Qaeda to the onslaughts which started in late June in Gaza and on July 12 in Lebanon, triggered by the capture of Israeli soldiers by Palestinian militants and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"The rockets and missiles tearing apart the bodies of Muslims in Gaza and Lebanon are not purely Israeli. They come from and are funded by all the countries of the crusader alliance," Zawahiri said in a reference to the United States and Western allies.

"Hence, everyone who took part in the crime must pay the price the whole world is an open field for us. Like they attack us everywhere, we too attack them everywhere." Zawahiri's commens indicated that Al-Qaeda, which is made up of Sunni Islamist extremists, was prepared to help Hezbollah despite differences with the Shiite sect.

Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and has since been blamed for a string of bombings in Western and other countries.