A fire at a Sudanese weapons factory early on Wednesday morning has been blamed on Israeli air strikes.
Sudan has said that four Israeli aircraft fired missiles that hit a military factory and killed two people in the Sudanese capital on Wednesday. Israel has not reacted to the allegations.
“Four military planes attacked the Yarmouk plant … We think that Israel is behind it,” Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said.
A huge fire broke out late on Tuesday at the Yarmouk military factory in the south of the capital which was rocked by several explosions, witnesses said. Firefighters took more than two hours to extinguish the fire at Sudan’s main factory for ammunition and small arms, according to Reuters.
Sudan on Wednesday demanded that the UN Security Council condemn Israel after it accused it of carrying out an air attack on the Sudanese weapons factory.
The foreign ministry of Israel, has long accused Sudan as an arms smuggling route to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip via neighboring Egypt.
A top Israeli defense official said Thursday that Sudan is a “dangerous terrorist state,” although Israel has refused to directly comment that it was responsible for the attack.
In 2009, a convoy carrying weapons in northeastern Sudan was targeted from the air, killing dozens. It was widely believed that Israel carried out the attack on weapons shipment headed for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel never confirmed or denied that.
Meanwhile, the United States closed its embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Wednesday due to protests outside the mission, coinciding with an airstrike that hit a weapons factory in Khartou, pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Thursday.
According to Al-Hayat, there was speculation in Khartoum that the closing of the US embassy indicated the US had prior knowledge of the attack. The airstrike caused a huge explosion and fire at an arms factory that killed two people.