BBC News - Sudan blames Israel for Khartoum arms factory blastThe Sudanese government says it believes Israel was responsible for explosions at a military factory in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday.
Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said four Israeli planes attacked the factory and two people were killed.
Residents reported seeing aircraft or missiles overhead before a number of explosions.
Speaking to reporters in Khartoum, Sudan's Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said: "We think Israel did the bombing.
"We reserve the right to react at a place and time we choose."
The tough words were likely to add to Sudanese suspicions that an Israeli airstrike was behind the blast. Israel has both the motive and means to carry out such an airstrike, and Sudan has accused Israel in the past of operating on its territory. Israel considers Iran to be a grave threat, citing Iranian calls for Israel's destruction, suspicions that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, and Iran's support for militant groups on Israel's southern and northern borders. Israeli officials have long contended that Sudan is a central player in Iranian efforts to funnel weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
Sudan claimed Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes caused an explosion and fire at a military factory south of the capital, Khartoum, killing two people. It said four aircraft hit the Yarmouk complex, setting off a huge blast that rocked the capital before dawn. "They used sophisticated technology," Sudan's information minister, Ahmed Belal Osman, said without elaborating. There was no word on the identities of the two people who were killed.
Netanyahu refused to comment on the incident at a news conference with the visiting Italian premier, Mario Monti. But Netanyahu's vice premier, Moshe Yaalon, said Israel had "nothing to cry about." Speaking to Israel Radio, Yaalon described Sudan as an important base for both Iranian and al-Qaida militants to carry out mayhem. "It's used as a base to disseminate terror, in Africa and in our direction too," he said. "There's no doubt that there is an axis of weapons from Iran via Sudan that reaches us, and not just us. It shows Iran continues to be a rogue state stirring up not a few conflicts in the region."
Sudan has been engaged in various armed conflicts for many years. Its government has been at war with rebels in the western region of Darfur and with its neighbors in South Sudan, which broke away to become Africa's newest country in 2011. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sudan was a major hub for al-Qaida militants and remains a transit for weapon smugglers and African migrant traffickers.
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Sudan's UN envoy Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman said Israel had violated Sudanese air space three times in recent years. The Sudanese have not revealed any evidence to support their claim, and Israel has not commented. Sudanese sources told the BBC that the arms factory was believed to have been operated by the Iranians. BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the factory is thought to have manufactured rockets and other munitions for Iran to transfer weapons to Hamas by an overland route.
The Israelis believe there is a well-used smuggling route running northwards to Egypt, into Sinai and then on to the Gaza Strip. Leaked US state department documents three years ago also suggested that Sudan was secretly supplying Iranian arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So Israel might have felt that stopping the arms flow at its source in Sudan was better than taking action that could upset Egypt, our correspondent adds.
Although Israel has not commented on the incident, one defence official told army radio on Wednesday that Sudan was a "dangerous terrorist state". "The regime is supported by Iran and it serves as a route for the transfer, via Egyptian territory, of Iranian weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists," said Amos Gilad, a senior official at the defence ministry, in comments reported by the AFP news agency.
In April 2011, Khartoum held Israel responsible for an air strike that killed two people in a car near the city of Port Sudan. Israel was also blamed for a strike on a convoy in north-eastern Sudan in 2009. Israel did not comment on either incident.
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Israel Radio reported that the IDF spokesperson would not respond to its query regarding a Reuters asserting that Israeli aircraft struck targets in Sudan in September and then again Oct. 23. The September strike, according to unspecified “foreign intelligence sources” quoted Thursday by Reuters, was conducted by a drone and targeted a weapons convoy south of Khartoum. The strike destroyed 200 tuns of munitions, including Gaza-bound rockets, the report said.
On Tuesday, a “huge explosion" ripped through a weapons factory near the Sudanese capital Khartoum, killing two people, Reuters reported. Sudan, the report added, swiftly accused Israel of sending four military planes to take out the complex. The speaker of the Sudanese parliament, Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Tahir, declared that the “Israeli attack on the Al-Yarmook arms factory will not deter Sudan from continuing its support to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas,” according to the Sudan Tribune, an online news site.
Sudan accused Israel of attacking a weapons convoy traveling from Sudan to the Gaza Strip last December and of a similar attack in 2009, as well as targeting a car carrying a high-ranking Hamas official last spring and carrying out other targeted attacks on vehicles.
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i agree, for onceGood for the Israelis.
The vessels, which include a corvette and freighter, set sail from Iran last month, the Irna news agency said. Their arrival comes six days after explosions destroyed an arms factory in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Sudan has complained to the UN that Israel bombed the factory, which is believed to have been operated by Iran. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the incident.
Anti-piracy patrol
According to Iranian state media, the naval task force which docked in Sudan on Monday morning includes the Shahid Naqdi, a corvette-class vessel, and the Kharg, a supply vessel that can carry three helicopters. The Iranian navy was quoted as saying the visit was aimed at "conveying the message of peace and friendship to the neighbouring countries and ensuring security for seafaring and shipping lanes against marine terrorism and piracy". The commanders of the Iranian flotilla were said to have met Sudanese navy commanders during the docking ceremony.
The location of the port was not given by Irna, but the semi-official Fars news agency said the task force had docked in Port Sudan. The vessels reportedly left the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas for international waters in September. Iranian vessels have been part of an international flotilla of warships patrolling the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea, since 2008, when Somali pirates hijacked an Iranian-chartered cargo ship, MV Delight, off the coast of Yemen.
'Impact craters'
