New London Threat; Security Hiked

6,000 Police Patrol London As Qaeda Blames Blair, Vows New Attacks

(CBS/AP)  As thousands of police officers patrolled London's streets and sprawling subway system Thursday, a deputy Al Qaeda leader threatened more destruction in London, saying in a videotape broadcast Thursday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be to blame.

"Blair has brought to you destruction in central London, and he will bring more of that, God willing," Ayman al-Zawahri said in the tape, which was broadcast on the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

Wagging his finger at the audience, al-Zawahri also threatened the United States with tens of thousands of military dead if it does not withdraw its troops from Iraq immediately.

The massive security operation Thursday involving 6,000 officers was said to be intended to reassure the public four weeks after the July 7 bombings that killed 56 people and two weeks after the failed July 21 attacks.

Officials stressed there was no specific intelligence of a third attack, but undercover police were mingling with passengers, and officers were armed with machine guns and pistols. Police helicopters hovered above while traffic was heavier than normal.

Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor who merged his militant faction with that of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, spoke with a Kalashnikov rifle propped up against a plain background. He wore a white robe with a black turban.

Turning to the United States, he warned that it could expect vastly greater casualties from its military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As for you, the Americans, what you have seen in New York and Washington, what losses that you see in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the media blackout, is merely the losses of the initial clashes," he said. "If you go on with the same policy of aggression against Muslims, you will see, with God's will, what will make you forget the horrible things in Vietnam and Afghanistan."

Referring to U.S. President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, al-Zawahri told Americans: "The truth that has been kept from you by Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld is that there is no way out of Iraq without immediate withdrawal, and any delay on this means only more dead, more losses. If you don't leave today, certainly you will leave tomorrow, and after tens of thousands of dead, and double that figure in disabled and wounded."

Referring to the Western nations who have contributed troops to the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, al-Zawahri said: "As to the nations of the crusader alliance, we have offered you a truce if you leave the land of Islam.

"Hasn't Sheik Osama bin Laden told you that you will not dream of security before there is security in Palestine and before all the infidel armies withdraw from the land of Muhammed," al-Zawahri, added referring to the leader of the al Qaeda network, bin Laden.