Learning to kill with Al Qaeda: The man believed to be Umar Farouk Abdulmultallab shoulders a gun with other members of his training class in Yemen in the new video footage
Another unidentified militant braces his gun on his feet as he practices shooting up in to the air at aircraft
The video, obtained and broadcast yesterday by ABC World News, shows the 23-year-old Nigerian firing weapons and speaking in Arabic about the impending attack in Detroit, Michigan.
He is shown reading from the Koran and saying: 'God said those who punish you must be punished.'
A U.S. intelligence official said last night that the preliminary judgement was that it was Abdulmutallab in the video and the footage was consistent with the understanding that he was in training.
The militants are shown practising in a foot gun battle
CIA target: Radical American cleric Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to have inspired Abdulmutallab
Abdulmutallab's training class practice using anti-aircraft guns in the video
The militants are shown practising in a foot gun battle
According to ABC News, the video was produced by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
It was first aired yesterday on television networks al-Jazeera and al-Jazeera English.
Former London student Abdulmutallab and others are shows firing at targets, including the Jewish star of David and one labelled 'UN'.
Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
The explosives failed, but burned Abdulmutallab, who was arrested.
He has been co-operating with investigators, discussing his contacts in Yemen and providing intelligence on multiple terrorism investigations, according to U.S. officials.
The IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Virginia-based company that studies terrorist groups, reported that video appears to show the first official communication from a terrorist organization by Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents.
He has been linked to Abdulmutallab and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Texas.
'While he had been supportive of groups in the past, he has until now never been publicly connected to a group through its official messages,' IntelCenter director Ben N. Venzke said in an e-mail.
'Today's release firmly ties al-Awlaki to AQAP.'
Abdulmutallab, the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, is thought to have been radicalised while studying at University College in London and then 'tutored in terrorism' in Yemen by Al Qaeda operatives under the control of Awlaki.
Awlaki became popular among Islamic radicals for his firebrand preaching when he was an imam in San Diego, California.
His sermons were attended by of the 9/11 hijackers, while a third heard him preach in Virginia.
Earlier this month he was put in a CIA hit list by Barack Obama. It was the first time that Washington had authorised putting the name of an American citizen on such a list.
Jane Harman, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, described him as 'probably terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.
'He is very much in the sights of the Yemenis, with us helping them.'
The U.S. has warned that the Yemen is becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda. A number of former Guantanamo detainees are thought to have joined Awlaki there and to be 'planning and inspiring' attacks against the U.S. and Britain.
Yemeni security officials said Awlaki, part of a prominent Yemeni family, had been jailed for his terror links but freed in December 2007 because he said he had repented. He was later charged again on similar counts and went into hiding.
U.S. officials say he was the main force behind the transformation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula into the terror group's most active affiliate outside Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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