Israel Takes Its Fight To Sudan

Two senior Sudanese government officials Thursday confirmed the recent CBS report Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes bombed targets in the Sudanese desert in January – more than 1,100 miles from home.

The aircraft strafed the city of Port Sudan where trucks were waiting to be loaded with missiles, rockets and other equipment. From there, they were supposed to have crossed the Sudanese desert in convoys run by professional smugglers who then were supposed to have taken the equipment into Egypt and Gaza.

At that time, Iran was threatening to transfer rockets to Hamas with a 45-mile range, allowing the terror group to hit Tel Aviv.

The Gaza arms delivery route begins in Iran and then goes through Yemen and Somalia. From there, the weapons and other equipment travel through Sudan and onward to Gaza through Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

The process of purchasing and smuggling arms for Gaza is orderly and organized, and makes use of “sub-contractors” such as the convoys of the smugglers in the Sudanese desert and the Bedouins in Sinai.

A leading intelligence analyst, Ronen Bergman, told the Israeli media, “Since the 1990s, Israel has been monitoring with concern the takeover of Sudan by radical Islamic elements and the establishment of terror organization training bases there,” and “In recent years Sudan has become one of the preferred smuggling routes for Iranian intelligence in transferring arms from the bases of the Revolutionary Guards to Sudan and from there to Egypt to the Sinai Desert and to the tunnels [under the Gaza border].”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com