Posted on 05/21/2006 7:59:30 AM PDT by FreedomNeocon
PARIS (AFP) - A group calling itself Al-Qaeda in Palestine said it carried out a bombing against the Palestinian intelligence chief and threatened more attacks in a statement posted on the Internet.
"We declare our full responsibility for this operation," the group said in the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.
"Your mujahedeen brothers managed to place a bomb in the special lift used by the apostate Tareq Abu Rajab ... but were hasty in detonating the device which should have been triggered once the lift door was closed."
Abu Rajab, overall head of the Palestinian intelligence services, was seriously wounded and his bodyguard killed in Saturday's blast in a lift at the services' Gaza headquarters.
The Internet statement also threatened other "apostate" Palestinian officials Sunday, including moderate Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas and the longtime Gaza strongman of his mainstream Fatah movement, Mohammed Dahlan.
A large bomb was discovered Sunday next to the Gaza City home of Rashid Abu Shbak, the overall head of the Palestinian security services, security sources said.
The 70-kilogramme (150 pound) device was discovered on the road outside his home in the south of the city shortly before Abu Shbak had been due to drive to his office.
Abu Shbak is one of the most powerful figures in Abbas's Fatah movement which is locked in a vicious power struggle with the radical Islamist movement Hamas which is now in government.
A group proclaiming its loyalty to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden announced its formation in the Palestinian territories in a statement received by AFP on May 8.
In March, the Israeli authorities announced that they had detained two Palestinians from the West Bank city of Nablus late last year on suspicion of working for Al-Qaeda in the first such arrests by Israel.
Abbas said earlier the same month that his security services believed an Al-Qaeda cell was operating in the Palestinian territories.
General Dani Arditi, head of Israel's anti-terrorist office, said last October that Al-Qaeda had infiltrated the Gaza Strip from Egypt's neighbouring Sinai peninsula after the withdrawal of Israeli troops the previous month.
Probably doesn't help that he took $800k of Hamas rocket money at a boarder crossing to pay his guards earlier in the week. Hamas might have more friends than Abas it seems (refugees from Iraq?)
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