US officials: Israeli jets struck in Sudan

Target was convoy believed to carry Gaza-bound arms

WASHINGTON - Israeli warplanes bombed a convoy of trucks in Sudan in January that was believed to be carrying arms to be smuggled into Gaza, according to US officials.

Israeli officials refused to confirm or deny the attack, but intelligence analysts noted that the strike was consistent with other measures that Israel has taken to secure its borders.

US officials said that the airstrike took place as Israel sought to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza during the weeks it was fighting a war with Hamas there.

Two US officials who are privy to classified intelligence assessments said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza and that there had been intelligence reports that an operative with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps had gone to Sudan to coordinate the effort.

But one former official said that the exact provenance of the arms that were being smuggled via Sudan was not known.

Although the airstrike was carried out two months ago, the strike had not been publicized until Sudanese officials said yesterday that a convoy of trucks in the remote eastern part of Sudan had been bombed by what they called "American fighters," killing dozens. The strikes were first reported on several Internetnews sites, including cbsnews.com.

The area where the Sudanese said the attack occurred, near Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is an isolated, desert-like patch near the Egyptian border and a notorious smuggling route.

Sudan said the reports emerged now because it had taken time to investigate the incident. But an accusation from one government official that the attack was an American act of genocide raised the possibility that Sudan was lashing out because the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for the arrest of President Omar Hassan Al Bashir on Darfur-related war-crimes charges .

The official was Rabie A. Atti, a government spokesman, who also gave a higher number for the death toll in the attack than the 39 reported in other second-hand accounts, saying by telephone from Khartoum that "more than 100 people" had been killed in the air raid. He said the trucks that were bombed were not carrying any weapons.

"I've heard this allegation, but it's not true," he said. "It was a genocide, committed by US forces." When asked how he knew it was American forces, Rabie said, "We don't differentiate between the US and Israel. They are all one."

The US officials who described the Israeli role declined to be identified because they were discussing classified information and were not authorized to speak for the administration.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not comment specifically on the reported bombing. But Olmert said in a speech yesterday in Israel that when it comes to security, "We operate wherever it is possible to harm terror infrastructure, near and far."

Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said that it would be "very logical" to assume that Israel would have wanted to bomb a weapons convoy in Sudan. "It fits exactly with the pattern of how Israel operates," he said.