Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri warned in a video, aired by the pan-Arabic television al-Jazeera, on Monday that his group is planning to launch a new wave of attacks on Israel and the Gulf countries.

"You should not waste your time in reinforcing your troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because their fate is doomed," al-Zawahri said in the footage aired on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11attacks on the United States.

"You have to reinforce your troops in two regions. First is the Gulf, ...and second is Israel," he added.

Meanwhile, the deputy al-Qaida leader also accused the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia of supporting Israel during its fighting with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.

In other parts of the videotape aired by CNN earlier in the day, al-Zawahri urged Muslims to step up attacks against the United States and the West, and threatened to launch new terror attacks.

Al-Zawahri's warning of attacks in the Gulf region, the world' stop oil exporting region, follows previous calls by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to target oil facilities to cripple the West.

In the past, al-Qaida had carried out several attacks against the Gulf countries.

In 2003, Saudi Arabia, where Osama bin Laden was born, was raided by the Saudi al-Qaida wing during which a series of shootings and suicide bombings targeted mainly foreigners in the kingdom.

In February, al-Qaida militants conducted a failed attack on the world's largest oil processing plant in Saudi Arabia.

(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2006)