Palestinian militant group Hamas is using North Korean weapons in its war against Israel, according to South Korea’s spy agency.

In a response to CNN Tuesday, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed an earlier report by the US government-funded Voice of America that Hamas fighters used a North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

A photo in the VOA report, first published on its Korea service, showed the middle part of a rocket used in the F-7, NIS said.

The F-7 is the equivalent of the Soviet/Russian RPG-7 and Chinese Type 69-1 grenade launchers, according to the Small Arms Survey, which is funded by the Netherlands.

NIS said it is "collecting and accumulating concrete evidence regarding the scale and timing of North Korea’s provision of weapons to Hamas."

The VOA report is not the first to link North Korean weaponry to Hamas. Last October, a senior official with the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said it had evidence of Pyongyang exporting RPGs and potentially other weapons either directly or indirectly to the Islamist militant group.

North Korea’s cooperation with Hamas also likely extends to tactical doctrine and training, the South Korean official said at the time.

South Korea’s claims about Hamas using North Korean weapons come after the United States claimed last week that Russia is using North Korean-made missiles to attack Ukraine.