New al Qaeda branch in South Asia launches first assault

A new regional branch of al Qaeda infiltrated Pakistan's navy and tried to hijack a vessel earlier this month to launch rocket attacks on American ships in the Indian Ocean, Pakistani authorities said.

It was the first major offensive by the newly formed al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. The SITE Institute's monitoring service said the group's spokesman, Usama Mahmoud, on Twitter compared the Pakistani naval officers involved in the attempted hijacking to Nadal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood.

Hasan was sentenced to death by a military court for the November 5, 2009, rampage, which authorities said the American-born Muslim carried out because he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan to fight other Muslims.

Mahmoud's tweet on Wednesday said the group sought to avenge the "bloodshed of Muslims" from Afghanistan to Syria as well as what it called U.S. control and superiority over "ours straits, our channels and our waters.