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Al-Qaeda in Iraq claims rocket attack on Israel

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.

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