TORONTO — As Canadian police and security agencies searched for any possible connections to the Paris terrorist attacks, analysts questioned whether the audio recording claiming responsibility for the killings was made by a Canadian.

The English version of the audio statement released by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had terrorism experts wondering whether it had been voiced by someone who had learned the language in Canada or the northern United States.

“It would seem that it’s a North American,” said Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at the Royal Military College who specializes in terrorism. “It sounds like someone who grew up in a northern state or Canada.”

In audio and written statements released in Arabic, French and English, ISIL said “a group of believers from the soldiers of the Caliphate” had conducted Friday’s gun and bomb attacks that left more than 130 dead in the French capital.

The attacks targeted “the capital of prostitution and obscenity, the lead carrier of the cross in Europe — Paris,” the statements said, adding France was singled out because of its role in the international coalition fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

The identically-worded statements offered no new information about the attacks other than what had already been reported but the familiar accent of the narrator of the English version caught the attention of some Canadians.

The Canadian-sounding inflection in his voice was first noticed by Prof. Amarnath Amarasingam of the Dalhousie University Resilience Research Centre, who is studying Canadian foreign fighters, including those in ISIL.

While Canada’s threat level remains unchanged, we are being extra vigilant in Canada as we continue to monitor the situation in Paris very closely

Ray Boisvert, a security consultant and former counter-terrorism chief at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said he had played the recording to a linguist who was convinced the reader “absolutely” sounded Canadian.

Recording terrorist propaganda using the voice of someone who “sounds like the guy next door” was meant “to be more chilling” and attract recruits, he said. Even the jihadist chant in the background of the audio was in English.

Previous ISIL videos have featured Canadians John Maguire, André Poulin and Farah Mohamed Shirdon — presumably in an attempt to spread the extremists’ message more effectively to English-speaking audiences. But in this case, the narrator was not identified.

The FBI issued a seeking information alert in October 2014 over an English-speaking man with a similar-sounding voice who narrated an ISIL video called Flames of War. The video showed him forcing prisoners to dig their own graves and then executing them.

“In the video, a man whose face is obscured by a mask alternates seamlessly between English and Arabic in pro-ISIL pronouncements intended to appeal to a Western audience,” the FBI said. “The subject in the video has what is believed to be a North American accent.”

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said he would not comment on “finer operational details” such as whether Canadian police and security agencies were investigating who had recorded the claim of responsibility.

In a statement, the minister said he was in “constant contact” with RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and CSIS Director Michel Coulombe. “While Canada’s threat level remains unchanged, we are being extra vigilant in Canada as we continue to monitor the situation in Paris very closely,” he said.

CSIS issued its own statement Sunday repeating its assessment, first made in April, that “the threat of terrorism has never been as direct or immediate, and is compounded by the fact that the nature of the threat is rapidly evolving.”

Boisvert said that since the Paris attacks Canadian counter-terrorism officers would be checking up on their targets, making sure none had disappeared. They would also be updating their threat assessments in light of what happened in Paris and adding to their capacity abroad to bolster screening of Syrian refugees, he said.