The armed wing of the Gaza- ruling Islamic Hamas movement said on Monday it has bolstered its missile capabilities which can now hit distant targets within Israel.

A spokesman for Izz al-Deen al-Qassam Brigades told reporters in Gaza city on condition of anonymity that his group has the ability to hit targets in Israel, "especially after knowing its weakness points." He did not elaborate.

"We have moved the battle into the enemy's field after developing our missile arsenal," he added.

The spokesman's comments came after the opening of a memorial to Qassam Brigades' founder Ibrahim al-Maqadema, who was assassinated by Israel 11 years ago in Gaza.

The memorial is topped with a mock-up long-range M-75 rocket that Hamas said it manufactured and used in its recent war against Israel in November 2012 when Palestinian missiles hit for the first time Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Hamas says the missile's range is 75 kilometers.

The Palestinian assertion of its enhanced weapons capabilities also followed reports last week that Israel intercepted what it said was an Iranian cargo ship carrying Syrian-made rockets bound for Gaza. Both Iran and Hamas have rejected the Israeli allegation.

The Israeli army said it conducted a search last Wednesday on board the Panamanian-flagged vessel, named the KLOS-C, and found dozens of Syrian-made M-302 surface-to-surface rockets that were concealed under cement bags, adding that Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah fired this type of rocket into northern Israel during the 33-day war in 2006.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif described the Israeli allegation as "a lie."

Izz al-Deen al-Qassam Brigades rejected the Israeli allegation as "untrue" but stressed that "the Palestinian resistance has the right to obtain various kinds of weapons to protect the Palestinian people and their occupied lands."

The recent weeks have witnessed a military escalation between the Gaza militants and Israel, raising fear of a possible collapse of a cease-fire deal between the two sides brokered by Egypt in 2012.