SPY EYES

Israel destroyed a Sudanese weapons factory in a bombing raid on October 28, The Sunday Times has reported. Sudan vowed to take ‘decisive steps’ in retaliation against Israeli interests, which it said are now ‘legitimate targets’. The Yarmouk arms factory, in the south of the capital Khartoum, was destroyed in a series of explosions on Wednesday, in which two people died. Sudan immediately pointed the finger of blame at Israel, while an American monitoring group said satellite images of the aftermath of the explosion suggest the site was hit in an airstrike. The images showed ‘six large craters, each approximately 16 metres across and consistent with large impact craters created by air-delivered munitions. They were centred in a location where, until recently, some 40 shipping containers had been stacked’, according to the Satellite Sentinel Project. There were claims that Israel attacked the factory because it was a front for manufacturing rockets and ballistic missiles for Iran. There were also reports that the raid acted as a ‘dry run’ for a forthcoming strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has so far made no comment on the destruction of the factory, as has become conventional when it is accused of attacking targets in nearby countries. But it has long seen Sudan as a conduit for weapons smuggled to the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip via the Egyptian Sinai desert. Sudan’s Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said: “The sophisticated warplanes and weapons used in the attack are available to no country in the region except Israel.” He added that Sudan would have to take ‘decisive steps’ in retaliation although this would ‘definitely’ not entail a direct strike. “But we have the means, we have the means of how we can reply. They killed our people… and we know how to retaliate.” There was widespread condemnation in the Arab world over the alleged attacks, although there was no direct proof linking them to Israel. Western ‘security sources’ told the Sunday Times the bombing raid was carried out by eight Israeli F-151 planes. Pakistan Today