Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has spoken about the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Sudan's Darfur crisis in an audio tape aired by the pan-Arab al-Jazeera TV channel on Sunday.

Bin Laden said that the West's fund cut to the Hamas-led government proved it was at war with Islam, adding Sudan's Darfur crisis also resulted from "crusader war."

He said the Western public share responsibility for their countries' war against Islam, claiming "the war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to their rulers and masters."

"They send their sons to armies to fight us and they continue their financial and moral support while our countries are burned and our houses bombed and our people killed," he said.

But, the authenticity of the tape could not be verified.

The Saudi-born militant appeared in an audio tape in December 2004, in which he appointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, as al-Qaida's leader in the country.

Source: Xinhua