KHARTOUM, Oct 24: Sudan on Wednesday accused Israel of carrying out
missile strikes against a military factory that killed two people in
Khartoum overnight and threatened to retaliate `We think Israel did the
bombing,` Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman told a news
conference. `We reserve the right to react at a place and time we
choose.
The military and foreign ministry in Israel, which has
long accused Khartoum of serving as a base for militants from the
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, refused to comment.
Osman said
four radar-evading aircraft conducted an attack at around midnight on
the Yarmouk military manufacturing facility in the south of the Sudanese
capital.
Evidence pointing to Israel was found among remnants of
the explosives, he said, adding that the cabinet would hold an urgent
meeting.
Residents of the area earlier said an aircraft or
missile flew over the facili-ty shortly before the plant exploded and
burst into flames.
A journalist several kilometres away saw two
or three fires flaring across a wide area, with heavy smoke and
intermittent flashes of white light bursting above the state-owned
factory.
In 1998, Human Rights Watch said a coalition of
opposition groups alleged that Sudan stored chemical weapons for Iraq at
the Yarmouk facility but government officials strenuously denied the
charges at the time.
In August of that year, US cruise missiles
struck the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in North Khartoum, which
Washington alleged was linked to chemical weapons production.
Evidence for that claim later proved questionable.
`I
heard a sound like a plane in the sky, but I didn`t see any light from a
plane. Then I heard two explosions, and fire erupted in the compound,
said a resident who asked to be identified only as Faize.A woman living
south of the compound also reported two initial blasts.
`I saw a
plane coming from east to west and I heard explosions and there was a
short length of time between the first one and the second one,` she
said.
`Then I saw fire and our neighbour`s house was hit by
shrapnel, causing minor damage. The windows of my own house rattled
after the second explosion.
The sprawling Yarmouk facility is
surrounded by barbed wire and set back about two kilometres from the
district`s main road, meaning signs of damage were not visible later
Wednesday when a journalist reporter visited.
But at least three
houses in the neighbourhood had been punctured by shrapnel which left
walls and a fence with holes about 20-centimetres in diameter, the
reporter said.
There was also slight damage to a Coca-Cola warehouse.
The fires appeared to be extin-guished by 3.30am, more than three hours after they began, a journalist said.
Osman said Yarmouk makes `traditional weapons`.
`The
attack destroyed part of the compound infrastructure, killed two people
inside and injured another who is in serious condition,` he said.
There have been other mysterious blasts in Sudan and allegations of Israeli involvement.
In
April last year, Sudan said it had irrefutable evidence that Israeli
attack helicopters carried out a missile and machinegun strike on a car
south of Port Sudan.
Israel refused to comment.
Last
year`s attack mirrored a similar strike by foreign aircraft on a truck
convoy reporte dly laden with weapons in eastern Sudan in January 2009.
Khartoum
is seeking the removal of US sanctions imposed in 1997 over alleged
support for international terrorism, its human rights record and other
concerns.-AFP
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