Al-Qaeda-Tied Group Claims Lebanon Rocket Salvo.

A Qaeda-linked group, calling itself the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam, Battalions of Ziad Jarrah, on Sept. 13 claimed the rocket salvo from South Lebanon into Northern Israel in the previous week. This was reported on Sept. 14 by the US-based SITE Intelligence Group.

Palestinian Shaikh Abdullah Assam, killed in Afghanistan in 1989, was a Neo-Salafi ideologue and spiritual mentor of Usama bin Laden, who in the 1990s establish a trans-national network of suicide bombers and saboteurs called al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan. It was from Afghanistan, then ruled by the Neo-Salafi Taliban, that bin Laden's suicide bombers killed that country's Tadjik war hero Ahmad Shah Mas'oud in an operation a few days before Qaeda's 9/11 attacks in the US in which 15 of the 19 Neo-Salafi hijackers/suicide bombers were Saudis.

SITE said the Qaeda-linked group had claimed the attack into northern Israel in a statement released on Sept. 13 by al-Fajr Media Centre on jihadi internet forums. SITE quoted the communique as saying the rocket fire came in response to "flagrant hostility" displayed by Israel towards Palestinians and Muslims.

At least two rockets fired from the village of al-Qlaileh in South Lebanon slammed into Israel on Sept. 11. The incident triggered Israeli retaliatory artillery fire. There were no reported casualties. Qlaileh is a mainly Sunni village. But it is within a Hizbullah-controlled area.

There have been persistent allegations of secret Qaeda-Hizbullah collaboration reflecting a tactical alliance between the IRGC and al-Qaeda, with the latter's operational base in Iran is near the borders of Iraq's north-eastern borders Province of Diyala, whose population includes Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs as well as Kurds and Turkomans. Most Qaeda fighters from the Iranian side enter Iraq through Diyala (see the background in news9GCC-IranQaedaAug25-08).