A militant group claiming links to al-Qaeda said on Monday it was behind the firing of rockets into northern Israel last week.
Your brothers fired two Katyusha rockets from south Lebanon which landed in the Naharia settlement in the north of occupied Palestine," a statement on web sites used by militants said.
It cited Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza and preventing worshippers praying at al- Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem as the reasons for the action.
The statement was signed by the Ziad al-Jarrah division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and the posting’s headline linked the group to Sunni Muslim militant network al-Qaeda.
Ziad al-Jarrah, a Lebanese militant, was one of the group of 19 who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. Abdullah Azzam was a preacher close to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
It was not possible to verify the claim. A group using the name Abdullah Azzam Brigades said it carried out deadly bombings at the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh in 2005.
Israel retaliated to the rocket attack by firing shells. No one was injured on either side.
The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 and has its stronghold in the south, denied responsibility for the February attack.
The claim of responsibility for the rockets came on the same day as bin Laden issued an apparently new audio tape on an Islamist website, warning the American people over their government’s close ties to Israel.
The message, entitled "A statement to the American people", was approximately 10 minutes long and appeared on a website often used by supporters of al-Qaeda.
The same website said earlier this month it would soon carry a "present" to Muslims from bin Laden, who is thought to be hiding in the mountainous terrain along the Afghan-Pakistani border, on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan.
The message comes a few days after the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by al-Qaeda operatives in 2001 in which nearly 3,000 people died in the United States.