Zawahiri: Al Qaida doesn't kill innocents

Cairo: Al Qaida number two Ayman Al Zawahiri has responded to criticism about the organisation's brutal tactics, maintaining that it does not kill innocents, in replies to questions submitted to the movement on extremist web sites.

The answer was in response to the question ''excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency's blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria?''

He also predicted the end of the Saudi state, which is ''swimming against the tide of history'' and the government of his native Egypt, which he called a ''corrupt, rotten regime (that) cannot possibly continue.''