The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt—Al-Qaida’s top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to launch holy war to break the siege of Gaza, in a new audio recording posted Wednesday on a militant Web site.

In the 11-minute recording, a voice purportedly by Osama bin Laden’s deputy spoke in Arabic and said the “salvation of the Muslim nation is through the march of its sons on the path of jihad.”

An accompanying banner said the message was issued to mark the 41st anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when over a period of six days from June 5, Israeli warplanes destroyed 400 aircraft belonging to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq — most of them sitting on airport tarmacs.

Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip; Syria lost the Golan Heights and Jordan lost the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Trying to minimize the shock and pain of the defeat, Arabs have long called the Six Day War the “naksa” — or “setback” in Arabic — but its impact remains a deep wound.

In al-Zawahri’s recording, entitled “In Memory of the Naksa... Break the Siege of Gaza,” the al-Qaida deputy blamed Arab regimes for Arabs’ 1967 debacle. Al-Zawahri said the Arab governments were “impotent and unable to protect the Muslim nation, its sanctuaries and its wealth.”