السلطات الأمريكية تؤكد بأن سلاح الجو الاسرائيلي دمر قافلة سودانية

Quote: U.S. Officials Confirm Israel Air Force Bombed Sudan Convoy by Gil Ronen (IsraelNN.com) United States officials have confirmed that Israel Air Force warplanes bombed a truck convoy in Sudan in January. The trucks were carrying arms that would be smuggled into Gaza for use against Israel, the officials said, according to a report in the New York Times. Israel has refused to confirm or deny the attack, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a statement, after the reports of the attack surfaced, that Israel has been striking at terror targets “near and far,” and warned enemies, “there is no place that Israel can't reach.” Israel strikes terrorists “in the north and in the south... There's no need to mention details; people can use their imaginations,” Olmert said. The American officials said Israel hit the convoy in order to prevent weapons from reaching Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. The Times describes the sources as two American officials “who are privy to classified intelligence assessments.” The sources said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza. According to intelligence reports, they added, an agent for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards was in Sudan, coordinating the smuggling operation. Iran funds, arms and trains two proxy armies on Israel’s borders: Hizbullah in the north and Hamas in the south. Payback for International Court? Sudanese officials made news of the strike public on Thursday, when they claimed that “American fighters” bombed a convoy of trucks in eastern Sudan. According to the Times, there was a possibility that the reason Sudan came out with the accusation now, two months after the alleged attack, was that it was reacting to a decision by the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war-crimes charges. While other accounts said the death toll was fewer than 40, a Sudanese spokesman claimed that “more than 100 people” had been killed in the air raid, which he termed “a genocide, committed by U.S. forces.” When asked how he knew the attackers were American, the spokesman said: “We don’t differentiate between the U.S. and Israel. They are all one.” A spokesman for the United States Africa Command said U.S. forces had not attacked in Sudan. “The U.S. military has not conducted any airstrikes, fired any missiles or undertaken any combat operations in or around Sudan since October 2008, when U.S. Africa Command formally became responsible for U.S. military action in Africa,” he said.