AKIPRESS.COM - A group called the Imam Shamil Battalion has claimed responsibility for a metro bombing in the Russian city of St. Petersburg that killed 16 people and said the bomber was acting on orders from al Qaeda, according to the SITE monitoring group, Reuters  reports.

The claim by the little-known group was originally published by the Mauritanian news agency ANI, which is often used by West and North African jihadist groups to release statements.

The statement, posted by SITE on April 25, said the bomber, Akbarzhon Jalilov, had acted on instructions from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the April 3 attack on the metro in Russia's second biggest city.

"Following the instructions of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri ... the lion Akbarzhon Jalilov, one of the knights of Islam in the Imam Shamil Battalion, carried out a heroic operation ... in the city of St. Petersburg, concurrent with the visit to it by the criminal (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," it said.

It said the metro attack was revenge for Russian violence against Muslim countries, citing Syria and Libya as well as the Russian republic of Chechnya.

"To the Russian government, which apparently has not taken a lesson from its defeat in Afghanistan, we say: This operation is only the beginning, and what is to come will make you forget it, Allah permitting," the statement read, implying there would be even more deadly attacks against Russia in the future.

Russian forces have intervened in the Syrian conflict in support of President Bashar al-Assad and are targeting jihadist fighters and others opposed to the Syrian leader.

Russian investigators said on April 20 that the man suspected of detonating a bomb on the St. Petersburg metro earlier this month had received money from an "international terrorist group" in Turkey.

Russia's Investigative Committee said Akram Azimov, the brother of the suspected organizer of the attack, had transferred money from Turkey to the suspected bomber, Akbarzhon Jalilov.

On April 3, a suicide explosion hit a subway car on a stretch between two subway stations in the center of St. Petersburg, claiming 16 lives, including the perpetrator of the attack, and leaving about 50 people wounded. Russia’s Investigative Committee said that a Russian citizen of Kyrgyz descent Akbarzhon Jalilov was the prime suspect, but did not rule out the possibility of the perpetrator having accomplices.