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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline al Shabaab rebels denied on Friday they had threatened to attack Kenya following a crackdown on Somalis in its capital Nairobi, and said a recording posted on the internet was a fake.

Renewed fears over the insurgents' links with Yemen and al Qaeda, and an attack on the home of a Danish cartoonist by an axe-wielding Somali man with reported ties to al Shabaab, have focused attention on the militant group.

A recording posted online said the threat was composed by militants angered by Kenya's decision to deport a Jamaican Islamic cleric and the deaths of protesters in Nairobi who took to the streets a week ago to demonstrate against the move.

But al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told Reuters by telephone the group had not posted the recording.

"We didn't threaten Kenya. That story is a false one. We never posted that on the internet ... Everything needs to be checked first by the media to make sure they know what they are writing about," Rage said.

Al Shabaab, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state, has verbally threatened to attack Kenya in the past. But anger has been rising among the Somali community in recent days after Kenyan security forces detained hundreds of Somalis living in a Nairobi suburb.

Al Shabaab has also threatened to launch attacks inside Ethiopia -- as well as Uganda and Burundi because they have peacekeeping troops in Somalia -- but has yet to follow through.

"Al Shabaab is not a homogeneous organisation that has the same stance on certain issues," Afyare Abdi Elmi, a Somali political science professor at Qatar University, told Reuters.