An Israeli F-16 warplane takes off for a mission from an air force base in southern Israel
(AP)
Israeli warplanes are suspected of carrying out the bombing raid in January
Jenny Booth
Sudan admitted today that foreign fighter planes carried out an airstrike on a convoy of 17 trucks transporting arms to Gaza in January.
Israel refused to comment on reports that it was responsible for the attack, which took place inside Sudanese airspace near the border with Egypt.
CBS, the US television network, said that 39 people were killed in the strike, which happened soon after Israel’s devastating three-week military assault against Gaza. The origin of the weapons – whether Sudan or further afield, with some fingers pointed at Iran – is not clear.
“A convoy of vehicles carrying illegal weapons was bombed near the Sudanese-Egyptian border in mid-January,” said Mabruk Mubarak Saleem, the Sudanese transport minister, adding that the weapons were headed for Gaza.
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The minister, who is a former commander of the Eastern Front rebel group that signed a peace deal with Khartoum in 2006, ending decades of civil war, said that arms smuggling was rampant in the region because of the marginalisation of his Rashidiya Arab tribe.
“Rashidiya tribesmen engage in this illegal trade because they’re so poor,” Mr Saleem said.
News of the airstrike dominated news coverage in the Israeli media.
Israeli security sources told the liberal daily Haaretz that there was an international network of smugglers moving arm caches from Iran through the Gulf to Yemen, across the Red Sea to Sudan and then through Egypt to Gaza.
“If the reports are true, the bombing in Sudan was an important message of deterrence from Israel to Iran,” the paper said in an analysis.
“The timing of the operation – not long after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza – is indicative of the importance which Israel places in its execution. If the powers that be decide that it is worth taking the risk and striking targets some 1,400 kilometres [900 miles] outside of Israel’s borders, then it would appear that Israel believed Iran is seeking to supply Gaza with significant armaments."
Eitan Ben Eliyahu, a former Israeli air force chief, told army radio that the reported Sudan raid showed that it was still too early to draw up a final assessment of the offensive in Gaza.
“One of the essential elements of this operation was the strengthening of co-operation, particularly with the United States, to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas,” he said.
On January 16, just two days before Israel and Hamas implemented separate ceasefires, Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement with the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to work together to stop arms smuggling to Gaza. As well as naval patrols off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, the agreement also provides for intelligence sharing.
In recent weeks, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has alluded to a series of “major operations” carried out during his term of office.
In another unexplained incident, warplanes bombed five fishing boats off Sudan’s Red Sea coast on January 16, wounding 25 people, Sudanese security sources told AFP.
An international conference on preventing arms smuggling to Gaza is due to be held in Ottawa in May.
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