CAIRO Al-Qaida on Friday confirmed the killing of Osama bin Laden and warned of retaliation, saying America's "happiness will turn to sadness."
The confirmation came in an Internet statement posted on militant websites, signed by "the general leadership" of al-Qaida.
The announcement opens the way for the group to name a successor to bin Laden.
His deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is now the most prominent figure in the group and is a very likely contender to take his place. The U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, thought to be hiding in Yemen, has also been mentioned as a possible successor.
The statement, dated May 3, was the first by the terror network since bin Laden was killed Monday by U.S. commandos in a raid on his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The statement's authenticity could not be independently confirmed, but it was posted on websites where the group traditionally puts out its messages.
The statement vowed that al-Qaida would not deviate from the path of armed struggle and said bin Laden's blood "is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain."
'Curse that chases' Americans
"It (bin Laden's blood) will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries," the militant network said in a statement released on Islamist Internet forums and translated by the SITE monitoring service.
"Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness," it added, "their blood will be mingled with their tears."
In the statement, al-Qaida also called on the people of Pakistan "on whose land Sheikh Osama was killed" to rise up in revolt against its leaders "to cleanse this shame that has been attached to them by a clique of traitors and thieves ... and in general to cleanse their country from the filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it."
The writers of the statement appeared unaware of the announcement by American officials that bin Laden's body had been buried at sea.
The statement warned against mishandling or mistreating bin Laden's body and demanded that be handed over to his family, saying "any harm (to the body) will open more doors of evil, and there will be no one to blame but yourselves."
The statement also said that an audio message bin Laden recorded a week before his death would be issued soon.
It stressed that the organization would not collapse, despite bin Laden's death.
"It is impossible, impossible. Sheik Osama didn't build an organization to die when he dies," the statement read. "The university of faith, Quran and jihad from which bin Laden graduated will not close its doors," it added. "The soldiers of Islam will continue in groups and united, plotting and planning without getting bored, tired, with determination, without giving up until striking a blow."
'Humble' bin Laden
However, security analyst Peter Bergen, author of "The Longest War: Enduring Conflict Between America and Al Qaeda," told TODAY that if al-Zawahiri took over al-Qaida, he would "run it into the ground."
"He's not well liked or well regarded, even by people in his own Egyptian, sort of, Jihadist group," Bergen said. "He doesnt have the stature that bin Laden has. He's regarded as a divisive figure."
The CNN terrorism analyst said he had interviewed many people who knew bin Laden and even those who didn't like him admitted he had some appealing qualities. People spoke of him as being "humble" and "modest," Bergen said, while some even spoke of having feelings of love for the terror mastermind.
"No one describes feelings of love for Ayman al-Zawahiri," Bergen told TODAY.
Meanwhile, anger and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad showed no sign of dispersing.
The U.S. carried out its first drone attack in Pakistan since bin Laden's death, killing 15 people in a hail of missiles near the Afghan border Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. At least one civilian died, they said.
The strike targeted a vehicle suspected of carrying foreign militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, an al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold that has been subject to frequent missile attacks, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
It was unclear whether intelligence gleaned from the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden on Monday played a part in the drone strike.
Drone attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and the attack could further increase tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan that have spiked in the wake of bin Laden's death.
The U.S. refuses to publicly acknowledge the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan, but officials have said privately that the attacks have killed many senior al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.
Pakistani officials regularly condemn the attacks as violations of the country's sovereignty. But many are believed to privately support the program, and some of the drones are suspected of taking off from inside Pakistan.
Pakistan's leader under pressure
Already under pressure because of relentless suicide bombings by Islamic militants and a stagnant economy, Pakistan's leaders now face criticism from all sides on bin Laden.
Both Islamists and ordinary Pakistanis are questioning how their leaders could have stood by while the United States sent commandos deep inside the country into a garrison city to eliminate the al-Qaida chief.
At the same time, suspicions that some Pakistani security forces might have known he was hiding in the country threaten to strain already uneasy ties with Washington.
"The country's political and military leadership should immediately resign as they have failed to ensure the country's integrity," said Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a senior leader of the biggest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore.
Pakistani security officials have charged that U.S. troops, after landing by helicopter, shot the unarmed al-Qaida leader in cold blood rather than in a firefight, as U.S. officials first suggested.
"We didn't find any bullet shells inside the house. There is no doubt that no shots were fired from there," one senior Pakistani official told Reuters on Friday.
Another security official told Reuters that if there was an exchange of fire in the house "then they (Americans) should prove it." "They must have footage of the operation. They should release it," the official said.
In Washington, people familiar with the latest U.S. government reporting on the raid told Reuters Thursday that only one of four principal targets shot dead by U.S. commandos had been involved in hostile fire.
U.S. officials originally spoke of a 40-minute firefight. The White House has blamed the "fog of war" for the changing accounts.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.


What i make from this.
It seems as if Al-Qaida is bigger than what the US thinks, they have more leaders and influential speakers than we expect. Just think how we would feel if somewhere to kill our president... ok so the current president we wouldn't much care about... but someone like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. We would be outraged and ready for war, in times like this, it seems were going back into another cold war era.