Israel Fingered in Sudan Convoy Strike

Israel is largely being fingered for mysterious deadly airstrikes that targeted a convoy in Sudan in late January and killed an unspecified number of people.

"CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has been told that Israeli aircraft carried out the attack," the American news network said in report on its website.

The broadcaster said Israeli jets destroyed a convoy of 17 trucks suspected of carrying weapons bound for Egypt, apparently meant for the Gaza Strip.

An unspecified number of people were killed and wounded in the strikes, which happened in the desert northwest the eastern city of Port Sudan, near the Egyptian border.

Israel has neither confirmed no denied the report.

But a military correspondent for Israel Radio told Al-Jazeera news television Thursday that Israel was probably behind the attack.

He asserted that Israeli warplanes would have hit the target while flying over the Red Sea without entering the airspace of Egypt or any other country.

Sudanese state transport minister Mabruk Mubarak Saleem told Al-Jazeera the targeted vehicles were carrying illegal immigrants bound for Israel.

He put the death toll at 800 people, including 200 Sudanese, while the others are Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans.

Saleem said the only weapons found in the convoy after the strikes were small arms belonging to the traffickers.

Feasible

Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert asserted Thursday Israel was targeting enemies everywhere.

"We are taking action wherever we can strike terror infrastructure, in places that are nearby and not that close," he said.

"We are hitting them, and in a way that strengthens deterrence and the image of deterrence -- which is sometimes no less important -- of the state of Israel."

Earlier this month, Olmert told his cabinet that Israel had carried out "countless major, important and decisive" covert operations during his term.

Military experts believe an Israeli air strike in Sudan is totally feasible.

Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, a former chief of the Israeli air force, told Reuters Israel was capable of carrying out such a 1,400-km roundtrip mission.

Israel reportedly has advanced missiles that can be fired from high altitude; possibly well outside a country's airspace and coast into a target using optical data fed by satellites.

Israel reportedly has a military base on Eritrea's Dahlak Island on the Red Sea, thought to be its biggest naval base outside Israel.

Haaretz cited a series of decisions reflecting "a willingness to take risks in approving distant, secret operations. Some of which we only learn of through reports in foreign media."

In September 2007, Israeli aircraft bombed a site in Syria that intelligence claimed was a nearly completed secret nuclear reactor.

Syria says the site was a conventional military building.

In 1981, Israeli aircraft crippled Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in a surprise long-range strike.