Powerful Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen and North Africa called Tuesday for jihadists in Iraq and Syria to unite against the common threat from a US-led coalition.

In an unprecedented joint statement, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) urged their “brothers” in Iraq and Syria to “stop killing each other and unite against the American campaign and its evil coalition that threatens us all.”

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The Al-Qaeda leadership has disavowed the main target of the US-led campaign, the Islamic State (IS) group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, and has its own branch fighting in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front.

But the joint statement, released on two jihadist Twitter accounts, called for differences to be set aside in the face of the growing coalition.

“Make the unity of the infidel nations against you a reason for your unity against them,” it said, accusing Washington of “leading a Crusader campaign against Islam and all Muslims.”

The joint statement promised “dark days” to the “alliance of infidelity and evil”.

Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry was given commitments from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join the fight against IS.

“We call upon our people in… all the nations of this Satanic alliance… to stand before the face of their agent governments and prevent them — by all legitimate means — from going to war against Islam under the excuse of fighting terrorism,” the statement said.

It also urged Syrian rebels to keep up their fight against President Bashar al-Assad, warning them to “beware of being tricked by America… and thus being diverted from your path” and becoming its “pawns”.

AQAP has been linked to a string of attempted attacks on the United States in the past, including a botched bid to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

Both the Yemen-based AQAP, considered the network’s most dangerous branch, and AQIM rejected IS’s declaration of an Islamic caliphate in June and said they remained loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egypt-born successor to Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.