GROUPS that monitor Islamic websites say al-Qaeda will post a new video in the next 24 hours urging jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West, the FBI said.
Spokesman Richard Kolko said the FBI had sent out an alert to US law enforcement agencies about the expected video.
"We got information the tape is coming," he said yesterday.
According to an ABC News report in the US, the FBI bulletin said there was no evidence of any direct threat.
Mr Kolko said the information about the al-Qaeda call to jihadists was gleaned from organisations that monitor Islamic militant websites.
However, he downplayed the video as typical of Islamist militants on the web, dismissing it as "nothing earth-shattering".
The FBI warning came as the US-based monitoring group SITE said the video encouraging terrorists to develop and detonate weapons of mass destruction in the US and Europe was posted on an Islamist militant forum.
SITE also released a computer-generated image, showing Washington DC in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, which reportedly appeared on an Islamist forum.
The 39-minute, documentary-style video, titled Nuclear Jihad: The Ultimate Terror, was posted on the al-Ekhlaas forum on May 25, SITE said in a statement.
"The idea of killing lots of people, this idea is available to us, and it must be used under the idea of treating others the same, so I say that terror in their countries must involve human losses and these human losses must be with WMDs," the video says, according to SITE's translation.
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are linked to the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington that killed around 3000 people, and the October 12, 2002, attack, when 202 people, including 88 Australians, died in blasts on the tourist island of Bali.
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