Khartoum Suggests Israeli Involvement in Car Blast in East Sudan

Sudan's Foreign Minister said the explosion, which occurred along a smuggling route possibly towards Gaza, resembled an Israeli strike

One person was killed when a car exploded in the eastern Sudanese city of Port Sudan on Tuesday in what some say may have been a covert Israeli strike.

The car was struck in the Sudan’s east on what has been cited as an arms smuggling route to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip via neighboring Egypt, Reuters reports. The government in Khartoum says the blast resembles an explosion last year that it blamed on an Israeli missile strike.

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, declined to comment. “I’m not going to respond to generic allegations,” he said.

Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti did not directly accuse Israel, but said “The style of the car explosion was similar to Israel’s attack on Red Sea state (in 2011).” Israel also declined to comment on that incident, which killed two people.

A local security source in Port Sudan told Reuters the car’s driver was a prominent member of the Ababda tribe known for smuggling weapons and goods.

Author: John Glaser

John Glaser writes for Antiwar.com.