(AP) — Al-Qaeda’s chief has called on Muslims from other countries to support rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, saying they cannot depend on the West for help.

Ayman al-Zawahri, in a videotaped statement released late yesterday, asked Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime”. All four states border Syria.

A senior Iraqi security official also told the Associated Press that intelligence over the past four months has revealed a flow of al-Qaeda-linked fighters from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul into Syria.

The comments by both the Iraqi official and al-Zawahri came a day after two suicide car bombers struck security compounds in Aleppo, a Syrian city that had been relatively peaceful throughout the country’s 11-month-uprising.

Though there was no claim of responsibility, suicide bombings are a hallmark of al-Qaeda.

“There is no treatment for (the Assad regime) other than removal,” al-Zawahri says in the eight-minute video posted on jihadist websites, according to US-based SITE Intel Group, which monitors militant messages.