Somalia's hard-line Shabab insurgents Friday said they will send fighters to Yemen to help al-Qaeda there in its fight against government forces, as the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh appealed for reason from those who joined the terror network.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour, a senior official of the Shabab militia that pledges allegiance to al-Qaeda, announced the plan as he presented hundreds of newly-trained fighters in the north of Mogadishu.
"We tell our Muslim brothers in Yemen that we will cross the water between us and reach your place to assist you fight the enemy of Allah," said Robow, to chants of "Allahu Akbar", or Allah is great, by the young fighters.
"Today you see what is happening in Yemen, the enemy of Allah is destroying your Muslim brothers," he added.
"I call upon the young men in Arab lands to join the fight there."
Yemeni forces have been battling al-Qaeda militants in the country and last month launched raids on suspected targets in the central and the Sanaa regions, killing more than 60 of them.
Several others were also wounded in clashes this week in a western province of the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state which lies north of Somalia across the Gulf of Aden.
An al-Qaeda affiliate based in Yemen claimed it was behind the botched Christmas Day plot to bring down a US jetliner from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Sanaa acknowledged that the Nigerian citizen accused by the United States of attempting to blow up the Northwest Airlines plane had been in the country just weeks before the foiled bombing.
Call for reason
Meanwhile, Yemen’s President Saleh urged "the young people who allow themselves to be fooled by elements of al-Qaeda" to "Pause [and] return to reason."
"It is time to lower weapons and renounce violence and terrorism. You must save your lives and become good citizens again," he wrote in the government daily al-Thawra.
Saleh also called upon the Zaidi rebels fighting the government in the north to agree to the conditions laid down by the capital Sanaa for a return to peace, saying they should cease hostilities, withdraw from official buildings and respect the law.