A Gaza-based Al-Qaeda-linked Salafi group claims Haifa fires
A Palestinian Salafist group, Ma’sadat al-Mujahideen, which swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, Friday claimed responsibility for the huge blaze in Haifa, which forced 60,000 people to leave their homes. This was the most devastating of the spate of wildfires that has roared through Israel for four days. There is no proof of the group’s involvement in this fire, or others claimed in Jerusalem in 2011 and in the American state of Nevada the following year. Terrorism monitors at the Jameson Foundation said the group’s claims are questionable, but it is fixated on the use of fire as a weapon of jihad, in support of its demand that the Jewish people “return from whence they came.”