A senior leader of al-Qaida's Yemen branch has called for attacks on Jews in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks online activity of white supremacist and jihadist organizations, said on Tuesday.
Citing a video recording by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) al-Malahem media foundation, SITE said that Khaled Batarfi, believed to be the number two man in AQAP after Qassim al-Raymi, also warned that no Muslim had the right to cede any part of Jerusalem.
"The Muslims inside the occupied land must kill every Jew, by running him over, or stabbing him, or by using against him any weapon, or by burning their homes," Batarfi said in the 18-minute recording titled "Our duty toward our Jerusalem," according to SITE.
"Every Muslim must know that the Americans and the disbeliever West, and on top of them Britain and France, are the original reason behind the existence of the Jews in Palestine."
Trump enraged Muslims last month when he announced that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said he intends to transfer the U.S. embassy there.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, on a regional visit, said Monday that the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv before the end of 2019.
Batarfi was one of some 150 jailed AQAP members who were freed when the militant group, regarded by the United States as one of the deadliest branches of the network founded by Osama bin Laden, captured the Yemeni port city of Mukalla in 2015, where he was held.
Yemeni forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition have since recaptured Mukalla and driven AQAP out, but Batarfi, who has since assumed a senior position in the group, remains at large.
AQAP has plotted to down U.S. airliners and claimed responsibility for 2015 attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. AQAP also has boasted of the world's most feared bomb makers, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, and the Pentagon estimates it has between about 2,000 and 3,000 fighters.
Batarfi said Muslims in Western countries, including the United States, were obliged to target the interests of Jews and the Americans.
"They must be eager to prepare themselves as much as possible, and to carry out jihadi operations against them," he added, according to SITE.
