Al-Qaeda in Iraq said on Thursday that it fired a barrage of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel this week in a rare claim by the group of a direct attack against the Jewish state.
The claim, on an Islamic Web forum where al-Qaeda in Iraq often posts statement, could not be independently verified.
Israel blamed Tuesday's rocket attack on a radical Palestinian militia and bombed one of its bases near Beirut. Israeli officials would not immediately comment on the al-Qaeda statement.
The US State Department said it could not immediately confirm the claim.
"A group of al-Qaeda lions planned ... a new attack on the Jewish state. The brothers accomplished their mission as it was planned," the al-Qaeda statement said.
It said the al-Qaeda fighters fired 10 rockets into northern Israel.
In Tuesday's attack, a volley of rockets landed in a residential neighborhood of the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona, causing damage but no casualties.
Israel responded with airstrikes against a base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a pro-Syrian Palestinian militia. The PFLP-GC denied firing the rockets, as did other Palestinian factions and the Shiite Hezbollah guerrilla group.
Major-General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, the head of Israeli army intelligence, said on Thursday that the rockets used in the attack were Russian-made Katyushas sold to Syria several years ago.
Without referring to the claim, Zeevi-Farkash told Israel's Channel 10 TV, "Today al-Qaeda is turning its focus to the heart of the Levant -- Syria, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, the countries around us, and to Israel."
Though it frequently rails against Israel in its propaganda, al-Qaeda has rarely launched direct attacks against it.
also see story:
International team to review results of Iraqi elections
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS