CAIRO (Update) - Gaza factions may be behind rockets that hit Israel and Jordan Monday, Egypt's official news agency quoted a security source as saying Wednesday, but Hamas said there was no evidence to support the claim. Rockets from Egypt's Sinai desert peninsula, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel's and Jordan's Red Sea ports, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others, Jordanian and Israeli police said. "The preliminary information that the security has received indicates that Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip are behind that operation," the unnamed Egyptian source told the state MENA agency. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticised the Egyptian claim, calling it politically motivated. "This sounds silly and does not depend on any actual reasonable evidence," he said. Egypt earlier denied the rockets came from Sinai. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. MENA quoted Egyptian security sources Monday as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous. "Egytian statements are conflicting," Abu Zuhri said. "We doubt the credibility of these statements and believe they are unprofessional and politically motivated." Earlier Wednesday, Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, when asked if he was convinced the rockets were fired by Hamas, told Israel Radio there could be a link. "I do not want to say convinced, but it could be that there is a link between Hamas and this firing - perhaps not people who are part of Hamas in Gaza, perhaps a link that is a little more indirect," he said. Egypt has not indicated where the rockets were launched from, but said it was scaling up the investigation. "Egypt will not accept the use of its land by any party to harm Egyptian interests," the Egyptian security source said. In 2005, rockets were fired at US warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack. Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, a tourist resort on Israel's southern tip which has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict. Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel's crackdown.
