Hackers have redirected the online home of Hamas, the Arab fundamentalist organisation, to a pornographic website.
Users who type in the URL http://www.hamas.org are currently rerouted to two domains - "hotmotel.com" and "teenjuice.com". On both pages, explicit porngraphic images are shown on the front page, plus links to pay-per-view sites on a vast range of sexual fetishes.
Both windows must be closed before unsuspecting browsers can remove the material from their screens.
The web attack follows yesterday's admission by Hamas that it was responsible for Sunday's suicide bombing at Netanya, in which a bomber and three Israelis were killed.
Hamas's military wing, the Izz el-deen al-Qassam brigades, had said in a statement that Ahmed Omar Alian, 23, a prayer caller at a refugee camp, had carried out the bombing. That statement described Alian as a "hero and a martyr", the Jerusalem Post newspaper said.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the political wing of Hamas, told the Reuters news agency that he thought Israeli intelligence was behind the attack.
"I'm telling them to die of their own fury," Yassin told the agency. He accused the hackers of trying to "disfigure the image of Islam".
The web attack is just the latest incident in the Middle East's internet war. In January a 16-year-old Israeli was shot dead after meeting a Palestinian woman in an internet chatroom and arranging to meet her.
Last year the website of Hizbullah, the Arab guerrilla group, was altered to display the Israeli flag. And in October Albawaba.com, a Jordanian-based portal site, was crashed by supporters of Israel - who bombarded its chatroom with emails containing large and offensive image files.
Recent articles
05.03.2001: Suicide bomb is new blow to peace22.02.2001: The new media manipulators
21.01.2001: Woman arrested after youth is lured to online death
02.01.2001: Net tightens around the hacktivists
30.11.2000: War games on the net
More internet news
Net news
Useful links
www.hamas.org
Jerusalem Post
iDefense: Middle East cyberconflict
· Guardian Unlimited lists links to third-party websites, but does not endorse them or guarantee their authenticity or accuracy.
