North Korea on Monday refuted claims that Pyongyang negotiated an arms deal with Hamas and denied responsibility for supporting a Hezbollah rocket attack on Israel in 2006.

An unnamed spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry refuted the veracity of a recent report published in the Telegraph, which said “western security sources” had claimed North Korea was negotiating an arms deal with Hamas.

The Telegraph’s ‘security sources’ believed Hamas may have already made an initial down payment to procure weapons and communications equipment on a deal claimed to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This is utterly baseless sophism