Zawahri calls for lone wolf attacks on West

The al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on young Muslim men in Western countries to carry out lone-wolf attacks – and urged greater unity between militants.

"I call on all Muslims who can harm the countries of the crusader coalition not to hesitate. We must now focus on moving the war to the heart of the homes and cities of the crusader West and specifically America," he said in an audio recording posted online yesterday, referring to nations making up the Western-led coalition in Iraq and Syria.

He suggested Muslim youth in the West take the Tsarnaev and Kouachi brothers, who carried out the Boston marathon bombings and Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris respectively, and others as examples to follow.

In a recording released on Wednesday, Zawahiri denounced ISIS as "illegitimate", indicating the extent of the schism between the two groups. In the audio message, Zawahiri said that his organisation does not recognise ISIS as the caliphate they claim to be.

Zawahari said: "We have endured a lot of harm from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (leader of ISIS) and his brothers, and we preferred to respond with as little as possible, out of our concern to extinguish the fire of sedition," Reuters reported.

ISIS declared a caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria under its control. The strategic differences between the two organisations indicate a generational split, terror experts say.