Sudan accuses Israel of fatal air strike on car

Foreign Minister Ali Ahmad Karti accused Israel on Wednesday of an air strike a day earlier on a car on Sudan's Red Sea coast that killed two people.

"From yesterday, we have indications that the attack was carried out by Israel. We are absolutely sure of this," Karti told a news conference in Khartoum.

The minister said he did not know the reason for the attack, but that in recent days "there have been allegations from Israel that Sudan is supporting some Islamic groups."

"This is not true. When Israel makes these allegations, it is trying to justify what it did yesterday."

In response to a question, Karti said he did not know the identities of the people who had been killed. He said they were just Sudanese citizens traveling from the airport.

On Tuesday, police suggested it was a missile fired from the sea, while state media and a regional government official blamed a foreign aircraft.

Witnesses at the scene near the airport at Sudan's main port city said the small car was destroyed and the two charred bodies of its passengers could be seen.

"A missile from an unknown source probably bombed the car," police spokesman Ahmed al-Tahmi told Reuters. He earlier told local radio the missile had likely been fired from the Red Sea.

The Sudanese Media Center, a news agency linked to Sudan's state security apparatus, and the speaker of the Red Sea state parliament, Ahmed Tahir, said an unidentified aircraft had flown into Sudanese air space to bomb the car.

"A plane bombed a small car which was coming from Port Sudan airport to the town... There were two people in the car and both were killed. The vehicle was completely destroyed," Tahir told AFP by telephone.

The unidentified plane, which struck at about 10:00 pm (1900 GMT), flew in from the Red Sea, to which it then returned, Tahir added.

The Sudanese Media Center said the army responded with missiles that the foreign plane managed to evade.

"We heard three loud explosions," a source at Port Sudan airport told Reuters. "We went outside to see what was happening and eye witnesses told us they saw two helicopters which looked liked Apaches flying past."

Tahir said the two people killed were travelling into the town from the airport when their car was hit. They have not been identified.

We heard three loud explosions. We went outside to see what was happening and eye witnesses told us they saw two helicopters which looked liked Apaches flying past

A source at Port Sudan airport

Israeli concerns

This is not the first time mystery has surrounded a strike in Sudan's eastern Red Sea state.

In January 2009, unknown aircraft hit a convoy of suspected arms smugglers on a remote road in the state according to Sudanese officials, a strike that some reports said may have been carried out by Israel to stop weapons bound for Gaza.

A total of 119 people were killed in that strike near Sudan's border with Egypt, according to state media, even though the attack was disclosed only two months after it occurred.

Hamas has close ties with Khartoum and has long maintained a base in Sudan, to which the group's exiled chief Khaled Meshaal is a frequent visitor.

Speaking at an Islamic conference in the Sudanese capital last month, Meshaal hailed the sweeping political changes in Egypt, which he said had given the Palestinian people their lives back, and called for renewed struggle against the Jewish state.

Just a few days later, a private Egyptian TV channel broadcast unconfirmed reports that the Egyptian army had shelled a convoy of vehicles laden with arms near the Sudanese border.

Israeli officials have expressed concern about suspected arms smuggling through Sudan.

But the Israeli military had no immediate comment on Tuesday's air strike.

Sudan is on a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, but Washington this year initiated the process to remove it from that list after a peaceful January referendum in which the country's south voted to secede.