Reported attacks on Sudanese military sites are raising questions about the regime’s ties to Iran and its continue support of terror. The Times of Israel reported on Wednesday:
Officials and residents of the Sudanese city of Omdurman said foreign warplanes struck a military installation nearby late Tuesday night, a London-based Arabic news outlet reported early Wednesday.
However, a Sudanese army spokesperson denied that any Sudanese facilities had been struck, confirming only that anti-aircraft fire had been directed against an object in the sky.
Witnesses in Omdurman said they saw and heard large explosions at a military site near the city, which sits across the Nile River from the capital Khartoum, the Al-Araby news outlet reported.
Sudan later claimed that it shot down an Israeli drone, but has not produced evidence to support its claim.
Noting the similarity of the reports to previous attacks on Sudanese arms depots, Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president for research of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, observed:
The Israelis have neither confirmed nor denied. However, the Israelis have historically targeted weapons in Sudan bound for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
This was the case in 2012, when Israeli jet fighters struck the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Yarmouk facility in Khartoum housing advanced Fajr-5 rockets. Israeli officials denied any knowledge of that raid. But weeks later, war erupted and Israel struck dozens of sites in Gaza believed to be housing the missiles that the air strike had missed.
The Yarmouk raid was not an isolated incident. In 2009, the Israelis reportedly targeted Iranian weapons shipments in Sudan destined for Hamas, conducting a strike on a large truck convoy. Another strike in 2011 incinerated a car carrying two men believed to be involved in the Iran-Hamas weapons pipeline. Just last year, Israeli commandos boarded the Klos-C in the Red Sea, seizing a massive arms shipment from Iran destined for Sudan.
Schanzer noted further that Sudan has longstanding military ties to Iran, and that Iran “has been a key sponsor of Khartoum’s terrorism infrastructure” since the coup that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power in 1989.
[Photo: Israel Defense Forces / Flickr ]