CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to intensify their resistance against the US and warned of new terror strikes in a video aired by CNN early Monday on the fifth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks. Al-Zawahir said the Persian Gulf and Israel would be al-Qaida's next targets.

The film was the latest in a flurry of al-Qaida videos released ahead of the anniversary. But unlike the others, it appeared to be new with references to Israel's bombardment of Lebanon this summer and the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, shown here in this videotape from December 2005, purportedly issued a new video Monday in which he warns of new terror strikes. The release coincided with the fifth anniversary of the attacks in New York and Washington. In the video, al-Zawahri addresses the United States: 'You should worry about your presence in the (Persian) Gulf, and the second place you should worry about is Israel.' [AP]

"You gave us every legitimacy and every opportunity to continue fighting you," said al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's No 2, addressing the US "You should worry about your presence in the (Persian) Gulf, and the second place you should worry about is Israel."

The video shows the Egyptian-born Al-Zawahri dressed in white and seated in front of a wall of bookshelves.

"Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster," he said. "And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with Allah's permission and guidance."

Al-Zawahri criticized the West for supplying Israel with weapons,and called on the Muslim world "to rush with everything at its disposal to the aid of its Muslim brothers in Lebanon and Gaza."

The video could not be located by The Associated Press on any militant Web sites that normally carry messages and videos from al-Zawahri and other al-Qaida figures. As-Sahab, the terror network's media arm, posted notices late Sunday that the video would be posted shortly but it was not yet available early Monday.

It was unclear where CNN got the video. The network quoted a counterterrorism expert as saying the video had appeared on the Web site for As-Sahab, but the production company normally uses other Islamic Web sites to post its material. The SITE Institute, an organization that monitors militant Web sites, later said it too had obtained a copy of the one-hour, 16-minute video.

Late Sunday, another videotape posted on the Internet, purportedly by al-Qaida, showed previously unseen footage of a smiling Bin Laden and other commanders in a mountain camp apparently planning the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

That tape's documentary-like retrospective of the five years since the attacks was unusually long - 91 minutes, split into two segments - and sophisticated in its production quality compared to previous al-Qaida videos. The footage - with English subtitles - surfaced on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the attacks, on a Web site that frequently airs messages from bin Laden's terror network.

"Planning for Sept 11 did not take place behind computer monitors or radar screens, nor inside military command and control centers, but was surrounded with divine protection in an atmosphere brimming with brotherliness ... and love for sacrificing life," an unidentified narrator said.

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