Zarqawi
Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the jihad at sea. Note the religious characterization of the American forces: they “came to raise the Christian banner in Muslim countries.”
DUBAI (Reuters) – A statement apparently from top al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide boat attack on Iraq’s Basra oil terminal at the weekend and vowed more attacks on coalition targets.
“We give you good tidings… your brothers with their boats targeted oil tankers in Mina al-Amiq and Mina al-Bakr,” said the statement signed by Zarqawi and published on Muntada al-Ansar Islamist Web site.
Basra terminal, previously known as Mina al-Bakr, accounts for 85 percent of Iraq’s crude exports.
Three U.S. navy sailors died from the attack in which bombers in three boats blew themselves up in and around the Basra terminal zone, one of the most heavily guarded facilities of its kind in the world. …
“As what your brothers, the al Qaeda lions, did to the destroyer Cole in Aden port, they have repeated this attack in a new garb and with stubborn determination by striking vital economic links of the infidel and atheist states which came to raise the Christian banner in Muslim countries,” it said.
“We tell you enemies of God, robbers of oil and riches and drug traders…O snakes of evil, we will exterminate and debilitate you by land, sea and air until God makes us victorious or until we die,” the statement added.