CAIRO, Egypt — Al-Qaida's No. 2 slurred Barack Obama with a demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of whites in a new Web message Wednesday intended to dent the president-elect's popularity among Arabs and Muslims and claim he will not change U.S. policy.

Ayman al-Zawahri's speech was al-Qaida's first reaction to Obama's election victory — and it suggested the terror network is worried the new American leader could undermine its rallying cry that the United States is an enemy oppressor.

Obama has been welcomed by many in the Middle East who hope he will end what they see as American aggression against Muslims and Arabs under President George W. Bush. Some believe his race and Muslim family connections could make him more understanding of the developing world's concerns.

Al-Zawahri dug into U.S. racial history to try to directly knock down that belief and argue Obama will be no more sympathetic than white leaders to what the al-Qaida leader called "the oppressed" of the world.

He said Obama was the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s Muslim African-American rights leader, who is known among some in the Arab world and seen as a symbol of anti-imperialism.

Al-Zawahri also called Obama — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — "house Negroes."

BAGHDAD — An al-Qaida in Iraq leader blamed in the 2004 abduction and murder of an Army reservist and other deadly attacks over several years was killed in an American raid in Baghdad, the U.S. military said today.U.S. forces acting on a tip carried out the raid Nov. 11 in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, killing Hajji Hammadi and another armed insurgent, the military statement.The Iraqi was accused in the abduction and killing of Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin, a 20-year-old private first class who was seized when his fuel convoy was attacked by insurgents in Iraq on April 19, 2004, as the insurgency was gaining strength. Al-Jazeera aired a videotape later that month showing the Batavia, Ohio, native wearing camouflage and a floppy desert hat, sitting on a floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.Maupin's remains were found in March on the outskirts of Baghdad, about 12 miles from where the convoy was ambushed.The military statement said Hammadi, also known as Hammadi Awdah Abd Farhan and Abd-al-Salam Ahmad Abdallah al-Janabi, led a group of fighters against U.S. forces in the second battle of Fallujah in fall 2004.Five other suspected insurgents were detained in the raid that killed Hammadi.It was the latest in a series of high-profile killings as the U.S. military targets the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership to shore up recent security gains.

NEW DELHI — The ship, operating off the coast of Oman in the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden, was crewed by heavily armed men, some carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Behind it were a pair of speedboats — the sort pirates often use when they launch attacks on merchant ships in these violent seas.What followed, officials said Wednesday, was a rare victory in a sea war against Somalia-based piracy that has become increasingly more violent, and where the pirates are ever more bold.A patrolling Indian navy frigate quickly identified the vessel as a "mother ship" — a mobile attack base used to take gangs of pirates and smaller speedboats into deep water — and ordered it to stop and be searched."They responded on the offensive and said that they would blow up the Indian naval ship," Commander Nirad Sinha, a navy press officer, told reporters in New Delhi. Then the pirates opened fire.Navy officials wouldn't say how long the battle lasted Tuesday, but the frigate, the INS Tabar, is a 400-foot war machine, carries cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles and six-barreled 30 mm machine guns for close combat.By the time the battle was over, the mother ship had sunk and the speedboats were racing into the darkness.