International

`Osama' praises Jeddah attack

CAIRO, DEC. 16. A man identified as Osama bin Laden, speaking on an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site on Thursday, praised an attack earlier this month on a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia and criticised the Saudi regime as weak and controlled by the United States.

The voice sounded like the Al-Qaeda terror chief's, and the tape, which was more than an hour, was posted on a site known as a clearing house for militant Islamic comment. The identity of the speaker, however, could not be independently confirmed.

The tape appeared the same day another dissident had called for anti-monarchy protests in Saudi Arabia.

Its reference to the December 6 attack in which five militants shot their way into the compound of the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing five non-American employees, showed that it was made recently. Four of the attackers were killed and one was wounded in the consulate attack.

``God bless our brothers who stormed the American Consulate in Jeddah,'' the speaker said. ``Those who were killed of our brothers, we ask God to accept them as martyrs.''

Audio-tape of assault

Also on Thursday, an audiotape surfaced on the same site that was purportedly a recording of the sounds of the consulate attack transmitted via the attackers' mobile phones. Sirens, machine gun fire and shouts of ``God is Great!'' can be heard. At the end, a man recites Koranic verses and then says: ``Humiliation for America the infidel and its allies!'' — AP

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