SAN'A, Yemen --- The deputy chief of al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen called for attacks on Saudi Arabia and U.S. interests in the region in a new audio message posted Monday on the Internet. 

The statement, purportedly by Said al-Shihri, urged followers "to attack the interests of America and the Crusaders, and their agents ... especially the Saudi" rulers who he claimed wage a proxy war against Muslims on U.S. behalf.

Yemen's Interior Ministry dismissed the threat, saying it reflected "increasing isolation and despair" on the part of the al-Qaida group.

The audio message is the first time al-Shihri has surfaced since a Dec. 24 airstrike by Yemeni forces that targeted him and other al-Qaida figures in this impoverished Arabian Peninsula country. In the 12-minute audio, al-Shihri sought to reassure al-Qaida's leadership in Afghanistan that the Yemeni chiefs were unharmed.

He also congratulated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for his "blessed" attempt to blow up the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently confirmed but it was posted on a Web site commonly used for militant messages.

The al-Qaida offshoot has become a pressing concern for U.S. security after Abdulmutallab, who spent weeks in Yemen prior to his failed attack, told FBI investigators the group provided him with explosives and training.

On Dec. 24, the day before Abdulmutallab's alleged bombing attempt, Yemeni warplanes raided a site in the Shabwa province targeting an al-Qaida gathering said to have included al-Shihri, the group's chief Nasir al-Wahishi, and possibly even the radical American-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki has been tied to both Abdulmutallab's attempted airplane attack and the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood army base in Texas.

Yemeni officials later said at least 30 militants were killed in the airstrike, and that al-Wahishi and al-Shihri were in a "weak state" following the raid. But they did not clarify if that meant they were wounded.

In the latest audio, al-Shihri said the Yemeni air force was "still flying over our heads to define the locations" of future strikes and urged Muslims to take up arms for jihad, or holy war.

"Oh, our people in the Arabian Peninsula ... we advise you to get your weapons ready to defend your religion and yourselves together with your brothers," al-Shihri said.

The Interior Ministry statement said security forces would continue to pursue al-Qaida hideouts throughout Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, which has successfully cracked down on al-Qaida militants in the kingdom, has long been concerned the terror group will take advantage of the Yemen's lawless regions to build a solid base of operations there from which it can threaten the whole peninsula. The offshoot al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was formed a year ago, when Yemen and Saudi militant groups merged. 

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan - U.S. troops and their Afghan and NATO allies are planning their biggest joint offensive since the Afghan war's start, targeting a town in the volatile south known as a Taliban stronghold and a hub of their lucrative opium trade, officers said Wednesday.

No date for the start of the offensive has been released for security reasons. But U.S. commanders have said they plan to capture the town of Marjah, 380 miles (610 kilometers) southwest of Kabul, this winter.

It is to be the first major offensive since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and many of the Marines set to participate arrived as part of the surge.

Up to 125,000 people are believed to live in the district around Marjah, an agricultural center in Helmand province surrounded by a maze of irrigation canals built with American aid in the 1950s and 1960s. About 80,000 people live in or around the town itself.

Between 600 and 1,000 Taliban and foreign fighters are thought to operate in the area, U.S. officers say. NATO officials won't say how many NATO and Afghan troops have been earmarked for the offensive, but they are expected to vastly outnumber the Taliban and their allies.


In Kabul, NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay told reporters that the operation will include at least 1,000 Afghan police and thousands of Afghan soldiers as well as thousands of NATO troops. U.S. officers say the offensive will involve the highest number of Afghan forces in any joint operation to date.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi did not specifically mention Marjah, but told reporters in Kabul that a large operation is coming "in the near future" in Helmand. He said it will "separate the local people from the terrorists in the area."

Fighting escalated in Helmand in 2006, and the sprawling southern province was transformed into one of the deadliest parts of the country for NATO forces.

Last spring, thousands of U.S. Marines arrived in the province to reinforce the British military. British and American forces launched twin operations to try to stabilize the area before the August presidential election, in which turnout in Helmand was extremely low.

U.S. officials have spoken publicly about plans to take Marjah in hopes that many civilians will leave the town, along with Taliban fighters who are not deeply committed to the insurgency.

Commanders believe support of the local population is crucial to establishing an Afghan administration as quickly as possible and to help NATO troops detect the numerous improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that they expect to face in Marjah.

Two U.S. service members were killed by a bomb Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, but NATO did not specify the precise location.

Col. George Amland, the deputy commander of Marines in Helmand province, said the Taliban force includes "hundreds of idiots running around Marjah right now waiting to aggregate" and confront the NATO and Afghan troops.

He expects the Taliban ranks will "dwindle very quickly into a very manageable number" by the time the fighting begins.

Amland dismissed most of the Taliban force as just "in the Taliban's employ" and said that local opium poppy growers and opium dealers will abandon the militants quickly.

That leaves the "dyed-in-the-wool Taliban," Amland told reporters in Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine Corps base in southern Afghanistan. He estimates there are "a couple of hundred of those that are rallying the rest of the cause." 

The militants are believed to include about 100 to 150 foreign fighters, including Arabs, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens and a few Yemenis, said Maj. Jundish Jang Baz, of the Afghan National Army.

The problem, he added, is that NATO isn't completely sure whether it can rely on all the forces supposed to be on its side. Jang Baz said the locally hired Afghan police were less than reliable.

"We think they're working with al-Qaida in Marjah," Jang Baz said, adding that he expected the Taliban to "scatter like ants."

"The real challenge is to make sure they don't flee with enough weapons to start another fight somewhere else," he said.

Azimi also said an investigation was still under way into a NATO airstrike that killed four Afghan soldiers last week in Wardak province.

The fighting broke out when a joint U.S.-Afghan force came under fire near a remote highway outpost and called in the airstrike. Both sides have said it appeared to be a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command denied claims by Afghan officials that the troops involved were special forces. 

RAMADI, Iraq - The U.S. Marine Corps wrapped nearly seven years in Iraq on Saturday, handing over duties to the Army and signaling the beginning of an accelerated withdrawal of American troops as the U.S. turns its focus away from the waning Iraqi war to a growing one in Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden held talks with Iraqi leaders amid growing tensions over plans to ban election candidates because of suspected links to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The White House worries the bans could raise questions over the fairness of the March 7 parliamentary elections, which are seen as an important step in the American pullout timetable.

The Marines formally handed over control of Sunni-dominated Anbar, Iraq's largest province, to the Army during a ceremony at a base in Ramadi - where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place.

If all goes as planned, the last remaining Marines will be followed out by tens of thousands of soldiers in the coming months. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010, with most to depart after the March 7 parliamentary election.

The remaining troops will leave by the end of 2011 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

But concerns about the success of the election - and perhaps the loss of hard won security gains that the Marines helped cement - are on the rise because of a growing political dispute that could see more than 500 candidates blacklisted because of suspected ties to previous regime.

The changeover at Ramadi, west of Baghdad, leaves the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division with responsibility over both Baghdad and Anbar, the vast desert province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In the battles for control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Marines saw some of the most brutal and deadliest fighting of the war.

Violence began dropping off in the province in late 2006 when Sunni fighters - known as Awakening Councils - turned against al-Qaida and sided with the Marines to fight the insurgency.

As many as 25,000 Marines were in Iraq at the peak, mostly in Anbar province. The few thousand who remain - except for U.S. Embassy guards and advisers in Baghdad - are expected to ship out in a matter of weeks.

The upcoming parliamentary election is also considered an important step toward speeding the U.S. troop pullout. But plans to ban hundreds of candidates have raised deep concerns in Washington that the voting could widen rifts between the majority Shiites who gained power after Saddam's fall and Sunnis who are struggling to regain influence.

Biden, who arrived late Friday, had a full agenda of meetings with Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has strongly supported the blacklist.

Some Sunni leaders have accused the Shiite-led government of using the ban as a political tool. But al-Maliki insists that Iraq must purge all ties to Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. A vetting panel has put 512 names on the blacklist and more are expected.