Cairo - Deputy al-Qaeda leader Amyan al-Zawahiri urged Hamas not to accept a truce to end fighting in the Gaza Strip in a new video message distributed over the Internet.

"Israel's Arab aides are attempting to impose on the people of Gaza a truce which will stop their Jihad in exchange for the lifting of the embargo (on the Gaza Strip)," al-Zawahiri said, according to a transcript of the tape posted to Islamist websites alongside the video on Sunday.

"But I affirm to our brothers and kinsfolk in Gaza that the jihad to liberate Palestine and all homelands of Islam must not cease," he said. "And if the field tightens in one place, it widens in other places, and Crusader and Jewish targets are spread all over the world."

Al-Zawahiri also called on Yemenis and Somalis "not to be less" than their "brothers in the defiant Pashtun and Baluch tribes" in Pakistan, "who made America and the crusaders dizzy in Afghanistan and Pakistan." (dpa)