Maghreb Qaeda wing calls for more suicide bombers

DUBAI, May 8 (Reuters) Al Qaeda's North Africa branch today appealed in a video for suicide bombers to join its ranks to add to what it said was its large and growing number of ''martyrdom-seekers''.

Al Jazeera television showed a tape including images the broadcaster said were militants preparing the bombs used in the al Qaeda attacks that killed 30 people in Algeria on April 11.

''We bring good tidings to our nation and youth and tell them that the list of martyrdom-seekers has become long and is growing every day,'' Abu Musab Abdul-Wadud, a leader of al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, said in the video.

''This is a crusader war on Islam and a battle of destiny between the infidels and believers so do not miss out ... come to a paradise that is as wide as earth and the skies.'' Islam promises heaven to those who die while implementing God's orders, but many top Muslim clerics say that suicide operations like those carried out by al Qaeda violate Islam.

Al Qaeda leaders accuse these clerics of being puppets for the governments of Muslim countries.

The footage also showed a militant converting alarm clocks designed to alert Muslims to prayer times into what appeared to be detonator timers.

''Allah is great,'' chanted off-camera militants, filming an explosion at a building from a distant location.

Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC, also claimed responsibility for an attack in March which killed seven policemen and four gas pipeline workers.

Violence broke out in the North African country in 1992 after the military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed.

Reuters JK SBA VP0338