(Adds quotes, details and background) By Lin Noueihed DUBAI, Dec 5 (Reuters) - A purported audio tape message by al Qaeda's deputy leader urged Somali Islamists on Friday to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign of suicide and other forms of attacks against Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Ethiopian forces helped Somalia's interim government rout Islamists in a two-week war. "As happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the world's strongest power was defeated by the campaigns of the mujahideen troops going to heaven, so its slaves shall be defeated on the Muslim lands of Somalia," said Ayman al-Zawahri, deputy to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "You must ambush, mine, raid and (carry out) martyrdom campaigns so that you can wipe them out," he said. The tape was posted on a Web site used by militant Islamist groups. The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified by Reuters but correspondents familiar with Zawahri's voice believed it belonged to al Qaeda's deputy leader. Somali Islamists, who took control of the capital Mogadishu in June and had imposed sharia law across much of the south, abandoned the capital last week in the face of advancing Ethiopian and government forces. BLOODSHED The Islamists said their retreat was a tactical one designed to avoid major bloodshed. Since they left, one Ethiopian soldier has been killed in an ambush in the south and a hand grenade was thrown at Ethiopian troops in the capital on Thursday. The United States and Ethiopia have portrayed the Islamists as linked to and even run by al Qaeda, putting Somalia firmly on the map of the U.S.-led war against terrorism. But the Islamists say their support comes from the Somali people and some analysts have predicted they would regroup and fight an insurgency from remote corners of Somalia, or carry out bomb attacks elsewhere in East Africa. Zawahri urged the Islamists not to be disheartened by their setback. "The real battle will begin with your campaign against the Ethiopian troops," said Zawahri, an Egyptian cleric who issues regular messages over the Internet or through video tapes. "I call on the Islamic nation in Somalia to remain steadfast in this new theatre of the Crusader wars that the United States, its allies and the United Nations is waging against Islam." Zawahri criticised the U.N. Security Council's failure to issue a resolution demanding Ethiopian troops withdraw from Somalia and said plans to send peacekeepers to the troubled Horn of Africa provided political cover for Ethiopia's invasion. The interim government wants a foreign peacekeeping force, approved by the United Nations before the war, to be deployed as soon as possible. New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Thursday for its quick deployment and welcomed Ethiopia's plan to pull it troops out of Somalia in a few weeks. Zawahri urged Islamist groups in Yemen, Gulf Arab states, Egypt, Sudan and north Africa to help Somalia's Islamists. "I call on my Muslim brothers everywhere to fulfill the call for jihad in Somalia," he said.
