US citizens in Israel injured by Hezbollah rockets on Friday sued North Korea seeking more than 100 million dollars, saying the communist state assisted the Lebanese Shiite group.

Hezbollah in 2006 fired thousands of missiles into northern Israel, which launched a deadly month-long offensive against its northern neighbor.

In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Washington, 30 Americans who said they were injured in the rocket attacks accused North Korea of helping Hezbollah build underground bunkers to safely store their Katyusha rockets.

“As a facilitator of the Hezbollah rockets, North Korea is financially liable to all those Americans injured by the terrorists,” lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said in a statement.

“The lawsuit aims to secure a measure of justice for the terror victims and teach North Korea that it cannot continue to support Hezbollah with impunity,” she said.

Darshan-Leitner is well-known for filing lawsuits against Islamic militant groups that have targetted Israelis or Jews.

The lawsuit on North Korea cites as its source for the allegations a paper by the Congressional Research Service, a government-funded think tank that provides briefings to members of Congress.

North Korea, one of the world’s poorest nations, is believed to rely on arms sales overseas as a key money-maker. Some experts say the communist state went ahead with its defiant April 5 long-range rocket launch in hopes of exporting the technology to the Middle East.

An Israeli air raid in 2007 destroyed a facility in Syria — a key Hezbollah backer — which the United States said was a secret nuclear reactor built with North Korea’s help. Both Damascus and Pyongyang denied the allegations.

However, the United States last year removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying it was not involved in terrorism in the previous six months. The step came amid a US-led drive to provide North Korea incentives to end its nuclear program.

(Source: AFP)