Photo shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up an airplane on December 25 in Detroit, Michigan. (AFP)

SANAA, December 28, 2009 (AFP) - Al-Qaeda claimed the failed December 25 bombing of a US-bound aircraft in a statement picked up by US monitors Monday as the jihadists threatened attacks on Western targets and Yemen vowed no let-up in its campaign against them.

Al-Qaeda's Arabian peninsula franchise acknowledged in the posting on the Internet that a "technical fault" had caused the failure of the plot against Friday's Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, SITE Intelligence said.

The statement which was accompanied by a picture of suspected would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boasted the "Nigerian brother" broke all security barriers for his operation, dispelling the "great myth" of American intelligence,

He used explosives technology developed by the mujahedeen in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) "manufacturing department," it added.

Another US monitoring group, IntelCenter, also reported the same posting.

The posting also called on Muslim soldiers in Western armed forces to repent for their service and kill all "Crusaders" by every means available, SITE added.

It came as US leaders spoke of Yemen as a new frontline in the war against Al-Qaeda after it emerged Abdulmutallab had spent time in the impoverished Arab state, apparently for training by Islamic militants who have exploited the loose control of central government over the heavily tribalised provinces.

Washington identified Yemen as a potential Al-Qaeda stronghold soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and established a counter-terrorism base just across the Bab al-Mandab strait in Djibouti to run operations in the region.

But Yemen vowed on Monday it would not become a new refuge for Al-Qaeda like Afghanistan even as the jihadists' local franchise urged new attacks against Western targets in the strategic Gulf region.

"Yemen is a land of peace and security, and will never be a refuge for these terrorist murderers and drug traffickers," the defence ministry newspaper quoted a senior security official as saying.

"Our mountains will never be a new Tora Bora for them," the official added, referring to the Afghan hideout where US-backed Afghan opposition forces came close to capturing or killing Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in December 2001.

"We will hunt them down until we have rooted out their terrorism and cleansed Yemeni soil of their satanic crimes," the newspaper's 26Sep.net. quoted the official as saying.

He promised "more operations against the terrorists and their hideouts" like those of December 17 and 24, days on which the Yemeni air force launched deadly strikes against suspected jihadist targets.

The official's comments came after a statement posted on an Islamist website in the name of Al-Qaeda threatened revenge for this month's attacks, in which 68 suspected militants were killed in eight days. Tribal sources and witnesses said many of the dead were civilian bystanders.

The Al-Qaeda statement called on Yemen's powerful tribes to "tackle head-on this campaign by the Crusaders and their agents... by striking their military bases, the intelligence stations concealed in their embassies, and their naval vessels operating in the waters off the Arabian peninsula."

Yemen is Bin Laden's ancestral homeland. In the most spectacular attack by the jihadists in the country so far, Al-Qaeda suicide bombers killed 17 US sailors on the destroyer USS Cole in the southern port of Aden in October 2000.

The United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al-Qaeda in Yemen, The New York Times reported late Sunday.

Citing an unnamed former top CIA official, the newspaper said a year ago the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country.