DUBAI — "If you can flee with your skin, then do so. By Allah, they will climb your walls and will come to you from where you do not expect," says Abu Baseer al-Wuhayshi, Al-Qaeda’s leader in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), in a video posted online following a suicide bomber's failed attempt to kill Riyadh's deputy Interior Minister last month.

The Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al-Qaeda announced their merger into "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" in January.

Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is responsible for security affairs, was lightly injured in the Aug. 27 attack in Jeddah. The AQAP claimed responsibility for the attack and named Abdullah bin Hassan bin Taleh Assiri as the bomber.

"Our heroes have woven their shrouds with your blood," Wuhayshi says.

The video also contains a telephone conversation between Assiri and the prince, in which the bomber says he wishes to return to Saudi Arabia from Yemen because he has repented. On Sept. 1 the Saudi Interior Ministry also released excerpts of the same conversation.

"I would like to meet you to discuss the whole matter with you," Assiri told Mohammed, according to the excerpts broadcast by Saudi-owned

Assiri was taken to Jeddah and when he arrived at Mohammed's residence to meet him, confirmed his wish to turn himself in and also help a group of Saudis living in Yemen to return home, the ministry said.

At the meeting in the reception room, Assiri made a phone call to one of them and blew himself up.

The attempt to kill Prince Mohammed was the first high-profile Al-Qaeda attack on the Saudi government since militants rammed a car bomb into the fortified Interior Ministry in Riyadh in 2004.

It was also the first strike on a member of the royal family since Al-Qaeda launched a wave of attacks in the kingdom in 2003, targeting Western establishments and oil facilities, and killing more than 150 Saudis and foreigners.

[