Dubai - Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has made an apparent claim of responsibility for a deadly suicide attack at a Tunisian synagogue last month, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
Abdelazzim al-Mohajer, described by the leading Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat as an al-Qaeda commander, told the paper the suicide bomber named by Tunisia as Nizar Nouar was a member of the militant group.
Mohajer said Nouar also went by the nom de guerre of Seif, saying there were several others like him "scattered all over the globe".
Mohajer's comments to the newspaper were the first apparent claims by al-Qaeda to involvement in the blast which killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists, near El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian resort island Djerba.
German government ministers had said there was evidence linking the blast to the militant network, which Washington blames for the September 11 suicide attacks on United States landmarks.
Mohajer hailed Nouar as a "brother-in-arms" and said the attack proved to the United States that it had not broken the back of al-Qaeda despite the military campaign it launched against the group in Afghanistan last October.
"Our network is not confined to a single spot on this earth. We are scattered all over the globe," he added.
Mohajer's comments were published a day after the newspaper ran an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, in which he said his ally bin Laden was still alive.
Mullah Omar, who the paper said was hiding in the Afghan mountains, also warned the United States that its future in Afghanistan was "fire, hell and a certain loss".