Palestinian group Hamas on Saturday blamed Israel for this week’s rocket barrage that targeted the Israeli resort of Eilat and Jordan’s Aqaba port.

An Egyptian official had said the rockets were fired by Hamas from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The Soviet-style Grad rockets crashed into the sea near Eilat and killed a taxi driver in Aqaba on Monday, in the second such attack this year. Hamas has denied it fired the projectiles.

Sami Khater from Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau said on Saturday the group had “no interest” in firing the rockets and even ruled out that they had come from Egyptian territory.

Khater added that Israel may have fired the rockets to have a pretext to launch new attacks on Palestinians.

In a letter to the Jordanian government, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Saturday also denied that his group fired the rockets and accused Israel and Egypt of trying to exploit the situation, the London-based newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi reported.

In other developments, Israel on Sunday said a warning to US citizens that they should know where the nearest bomb shelter if they travel to the Red Sea resort Eilat should also apply to next door Aqaba, in Jordan.

Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov was expected to raise the US State Department’s August 5 travel warning with US ambassador James Cunningham this week, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday.

The warning at www.travel.state.gov/travel says “rockets have been fired recently into the Eilat and Aqaba areas. US citizens in Eilat and southern Israel are advised to ascertain the location of the nearest bomb shelter.”  

There is no equivalent warning for Jordan, where one taxi driver was killed and three other people injured last Monday by a rocket which exploded outside a five-star international beach hotel in Aqaba, just across the gulf from Eilat.

“The update to the US travel advisory to Israel is incorrect, singling out Eilat but not Aqaba, despite the fact that the rockets’ only fatality was in the Jordanian city,” the Israeli ministry statement said.

“Differentiating Israel from its neighbor that actually suffered loss of life is improper and lacks balance.”

There was no travel advisory either for Egypt’s Sinai, where Israel says the salvo of short-range rockets came from.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they were fired “without a doubt” by Islamist militants of the Hamas movement which rules the Gaza Strip to the north.  

Israel believes the rockets were aimed at Eilat, a favorite seaside getaway, but overshot and hit the Jordanian beachfront. Egyptian security sources have said they also suspect Gaza militants, but Hamas denied the charge.

Yedioth Ahronoth said “Israeli officials voiced their displeasure … that the travel advisory to Jordan had not been similarly escalated despite the fact that the Grad rockets landed in Aqaba and killed a Jordanian citizen.”

“Drawing a distinction between Israel and its neighbor was inappropriate,” said Tourism Ministry official, who accused State Department of “discriminatory” behavior.

Israel and Jordan made peace in 1994. Travel between the resorts involves few formalities and a 40 minute taxi ride.

In a separate report, Al-Quds al-Arabi said Egyptian security forces had arrested three Palestinians suspected of planning a simultaneous attack in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh.

The newspaper said a large quantity of bomb-making equipment was discovered in a car for an explosion investigators believe was supposed to have been carried out simultaneously with the rocket fire at Eilat and Aqaba.

The three men in custody are all of Palestinian extraction, the newspaper said.