Al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahri speaks from an unknown location, in this still image taken from video uploaded on a social media website June 8, 2011. 
 
 DUBAI Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri on Wednesday announced the formation of an Indian branch of his militant group he said would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the subcontinent. 
 
 In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri also renewed a longstanding vow of loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in an apparent snub to the Islamic State armed group challenging al Qaeda for leadership of transnational Islamist militancy. 
 
 Zawahri described the formation of "Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" as a glad tidings for Muslims "in Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujurat, Ahmedabad, and Kashmir" and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression. 
 
 Counter-terrorism experts say al Qaeda's ageing leaders are struggling to compete for recruits with Islamic State, which has galvanised young followers around the world by carving out tracts of territory across the Iraq-Syria border. 
 
 Islamic State leader Abu Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi calls himself a "caliph" or head of state and has demanded the loyalty of all Muslims. 
 
 The group fell out with Zawahri in 2013 over its expansion into Syria, where Baghdadi's followers have carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions. 
 
 As well being an indirect repudiation of Islamic State, the announcement could pose a challenge to India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi. He has already faced criticism for remaining silent about several incidents deemed anti-Muslim, underscoring fears that his Hindu nationalist followers will upset religious relations in the majority Hindi nation. 
 
 However, while al Qaeda is very much at home in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, due to influential contacts and a long presence there, it is a minnow compared to local militant groups in terms of manpower and regional knowledge. 
 
 SAFE HAVEN 
 
 Over the years Zawahri and his predecessor Osama bin Laden, killed by U.S. forces in 2011, repeatedly pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar, in return for the safe haven he granted their followers in Afghanistan. 
 
 The statement did not mention Islamic State or Baghdadi, but it appear to take a subtle dig at the group's efforts at administering areas it has seized in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 Islamic State's effort at state-building is something never attempted by al Qaeda's central leaders, who traditionally have preferred to plot complex attacks on targets in the West. 
 
 Zawahri called for unity among militants and criticised "discord" - echoing a common al Qaeda complaint against Islamic State's record of clashing with rival Islamist groups in Syria. 
 
 The statement also warned al Qaeda's new wing against oppressing local populations - another complaint levelled against Islamic State by critics in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 "If you said that you are doing jihad to defend the sanctities of the Muslims, then you must not transgress against them or their money or honour, and not even transgress your mujahideen brothers by word and action," he said. 
 
 "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," he said. "If you say that by your jihad you do not want but the pleasure of Allah, then you must not race for governance and leadership at the first opportunity." 
 
 Muslims account for 15 percent of Indians but, numbering an estimated 175 million, theirs is the third-largest Muslim population in the world. 
 
 Centuries of rule by medieval Muslim invaders drove a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. Tensions have grown since Pakistan was carved from Muslim-majority areas of India in 1947, a violent partition in which hundreds of thousands were killed. In the era of Washington's "war on terror", some Indian Muslims have begun to sympathise more with hardline pan-Islamic groups and causes. 
 
 (Reporting by William Maclean; Editing by Alison Williams) ||||| NEW DELHI (AP) — Al-Qaida has expanded into India, the leader of the terror group said in a video released Thursday, vowing that its militants would bring Islamic law to the entire subcontinent and "wage jihad against its enemies." 
 
 At least three Indian states with large Muslim populations have been put on alert in the wake of the video's release, local TV stations reported, though there was no indication of an increased security presence. 
 
 The new group "is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent into a single entity," al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri said in the video, which was seen online by the SITE monitoring group. 
 
 While his comments raised concerns in India, al-Zawahri's message seemed largely directed at his own rivals in the international jihad movement, and with raising al-Qaida's profile in the wake of repeated successes by the Islamic State militant group. 
 
 Al-Qaida has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State, whose fighters have captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq and recently beheaded two American journalists. 
 
 Al-Qaida "is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world," said Ajai Sahni, a top Indian security analyst with the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management. 
 
 "Osama bin Laden has been killed and (al-Qaida's) entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks," he said. 
 
 While al-Zawahri's statement referred to the "Indian subcontinent" — a term that most commonly refers to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal — his comments were widely seen as directed at India, a largely Hindu nation with a large Muslim minority. 
 
 Al-Zawahri said the group, Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian subcontinent, would fight for an Islamic state and laws across the region, "which was part of the Muslims' territories before it was occupied by the infidel enemy." 
 
 The leader of the new group, Essam Omar, said in an audio recording released with the video, that Jews and Hindus — who he referred to as "apostates of India" — "will watch your destruction by your own eyes." 
 
 Fighters will "storm your barricades with cars packed with gunpowder," Omar said, decrying what he called the region's "injustice toward Muslims." 
 
 Until recently, India had largely seen itself as beyond the recruiting territory of international jihadists like al-Qaida. Over the past few months, however, the Islamic State has grown in prominence in India, and is increasingly believed to be gaining followers here. Last month, an Indian engineering student who had traveled to Iraq with friends, and who was thought to have joined the Islamic State, was reported killed. 
 
 Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Thursday morning with top security and intelligence officials to discuss the threat. 
 
 A spokesman for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said the statement was "a matter of serious concern. But there is nothing to worry about. We have a strong government at the federal level." 
 
 India, though, has a notoriously underfunded and ill-trained security infrastructure. In 2008, a small group of Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai, India's financial hub, effectively shutting down the city for days and killing 166 people. 
 
 New Delhi has also waged a long-running insurgency war in Kashmir, India's only majority-Muslim state, with militants fighting to bring independence to the Himalayan region or join it to neighboring Pakistan. The fighting has left thousands of people dead. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP Writers Ashok Sharma and Nirmala George contributed to this report. ||||| Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has announced the formation of an Indian branch of his global armed group that he said would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the subcontinent. 
 
 In a video spotted in online "jihadist" forums on Wednesday by the SITE terrorism monitoring group, Zawahiri said the new force would "crush the artificial borders" dividing Muslim populations in the region. 
 
 Al-Qaeda is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its surviving leadership are thought to be hiding out, but Zawahiri said the group would take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. 
 
 "This entity was not established today but is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian sub-continent into a single entity," he said. 
 
 Founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by US commandos in May 2011, al-Qaeda has long claimed leadership of the self-declared jihadists fighting to restore a single caliphate in Muslim lands. 
 
 But since the death of its figurehead, it has been somewhat eclipsed, first by its own offshoots in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and now by the so-called "Islamic State" fighting in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 While still regarded as a threat to the West, the group has never managed carry out another attack on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attacks by hijacked airliners on New York and Washington. 
 
 But, in launching "Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian sub-continent," Zawahiri may be attempting to recapture some of the limelight for his group and to exploit existing unrest in Kashmir and Myanmar. 
 
 "It is an entity that was formed to promulgate the call of the reviving imam, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, may Allah have mercy upon him," Zawahiri said. 
 
 'Waging jihad' 
 
 Zawahiri called on the "umma," or Muslim nation, to unite around "tawhid," or monotheism, "to wage jihad against its enemies, to liberate its land, to restore its sovereignty and to revive its caliphate." 
 
 He said the group would recognise the overarching leadership of the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and be led day-to-day by senior Pakistani fighter Asim Umar. 
 
 The 55-minute video begins with stock footage of the late bin Laden giving a sermon, before cutting to a satellite map of southwest Asia, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the Horn of Africa. 
 
 Then it cuts to a white-bearded Zawahiri, in a white turban and glasses, against the backdrop of a brown floral curtain and desk with hardback books and a tin holding ballpoint pens and prayer beads. 
 
 Umar also speaks in the video - using the Urdu language of Pakistan rather than the Egyptian doctor Zawahiri's native Arabic - along with a new group spokesman identified as Usama Mahmoud. 
 
 The video is produced by Al-Qaeda's usual media arm, the As-Sahab Media Foundation - "The Cloud" - and SITE reported that it had been widely distributed on jihadist online forums. 
 
 'Policy statement' 
 
 Meanwhile the Pakistan Taliban has distanced itself from the recently formed splinter group Jamaat-ur-Ahrar and the Islamic State. 
 
 In a new "policy statement" released on Thursday, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid termed both groups "suspicious" and "a conspiracy". 
 
 He said TTP has expelled its former Mohmand Agency commander Omar Khalid Khorasani or Abdul Wali, who founded the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar recently. 
 
 The Pakistan Taliban reiterated its allegiance to the Afghan Taliban and its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar in a statement that comes on the same day as al-Qaeda announcing the formation of its new franchise in South Asia.
– With an even more brutal group of Islamic extremists capturing the world's attention, is al-Qaeda feeling neglected? In what analysts see as an effort to grab the spotlight from ISIS, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has announced the formation of an Indian branch of the terror network that will "raise the flag of jihad" across the region, reports Al Jazeera. In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri called the new entity the "fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent" and vowed to bring Islamic law to the entire region. Al-Qaeda disowned ISIS early this year, and while Zawahri didn't mention the former affiliate by name, he appeared to be taking swipes at it with comments like "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," reports Reuters. Three Indian states with high Muslim populations have been placed on alert, though it's not clear how much of a threat the new entity is. Al-Qaeda "is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world," a top Indian security analyst tells the AP. Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda's "entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks," the analyst says.