Israel Killed 39 in Attack on Sudan Convoy

Answering accusations from a Sudanese minister that the US Air Force had killed 39 people in a January attack in that nation, US officials say that in fact it was the Israeli military that launched the attack on a convoy of trucks northwest of Port Sudan city.

Reportedly, the Israeli planes used a US base in Djibouti to stage the attacks, as part of the agreement between Israel and the outgoing Bush Administration made in mid January. Israeli officials would neither confirm nor deny the attacks.

The trucks attacked were said to be smuggling small arms to Hamas, and while an exact date for the attack was not given it appears to have been shortly (perhaps just days) after the Israeli military halted its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. Everyone in the trucks, said to include Ethiopians and Eritreans, was reported killed, and an unknown number of civilians were also said to be wounded in the attack.