Sudan blames Israel for deadly airstrike

Sudan’s foreign minister blamed Israel for a bombing attack on a car near the country’s port city that killed two.

“This is absolutely an Israeli attack,” Ali Karti told reporters Wednesday in the capital of Khartoum, Reuters reported.

The day before, an unidentified plane reportedly flew into Sudanese airspace from the Red Sea and bombed the car, killing its two passengers, before flying back the way it came. The plane evaded several missiles fired by the Sudanese army.

Karti said one of the car’s dead passengers was a Sudanese citizen with no government or Islamist ties.

Israel carried out the attack, he said, to prevent Sudan from being removed from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Sudan is under consideration to be removed from the list.

Neither Israel’s foreign minister nor its military has commented on the attack.

Israel was accused in 2009 of a deadly strike on a convoy of trucks in eastern Sudan suspected of being arms smugglers transporting weapons bound for the Gaza Strip.