[R-G] US jets 'bombed convoy in Sudan'

[Anthony Fenton]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/03/200932610224764733.html

US jets 'bombed convoy in Sudan'
Salim said the air raids were launched from the
US fleet in the Red Sea [File: Gallo/Getty]

A Sudanese minister has told Al Jazeera that the US launched two air  
raids in the country earlier this year.

Mabrouk Mubarak Salim, the state minister for highways, said on  
Thursday that Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans were killed  
in the attacks in January and February.

The attacks targeted a number of cars in the desert near the eastern  
city of Port Sudan, Salim said.

More than 50 people received treatment at a hospital in the town of  
Kassala after the raids, which were launched from the US fleet in the  
Red Sea, he said.

However, Deng Alor, the Sudanese foreign minister, said in Egypt on  
Wednesday that he had no knowledge of any such air raid.

"We have no information about such an attack," he said.

'Israel involved'

The US-based CBS network reported similar attacks on Wednesday, but  
said its sources had told David Martin, its Pentagon reporter, that  
Israeli aircraft were involved.

CBS said that the jets were targeting weapons convoys heading through  
Sudan on their way to Egypt, where they would have been taken across  
the Sinai into the Gaza Strip.

"Sudan used to provide Hamas with weapons but that is not the case any  
more," Alor said.

Salim said that the air raids hit human-traffickers travelling through  
the desert area and the only weapons in the convoys were small arms  
being carried by guards.

Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist, told Al Jazeera that his  
Israeli and US sources backed up the CBS take on events.

Bergman said that weapons are smuggled to Gaza either from Syria  
though the Sinai peninsula or from Iran via Sudan.

"The last operation executed by the Israeli military forces in the  
Gaza Strip, has caused Hamas to lose quite a lot of its arsenal and  
therefore to request for more and more supplies from Iran," Bergman  
said.

"Some of those supplies were intercepted in that alleged raid by the  
Israeli air force."

Neither the US, which has troops based in the African state of  
Djibouti, nor Israel has commented on the alleged incident.

Israel fought a 22-day war in Gaza which ended when it declared a  
unilateral halt to military operations on January 18.