LONDON, (Reuters) – Israeli fighter-bombers, backed by drones, ships and helicopters, attacked a convoy in Sudan in January after agents told it the trucks were taking Iranian missiles to Hamas, Time magazine said yesterday.
Quoting two senior Israeli security sources, the magazine said the 23-truck convoy was carrying the missiles to Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers who were then fighting Israel.
Israel has declined to comment on media reports about the attack, and Defence Minister Ehud Barak declined to reveal any details when asked about the Time article.
“I don’t believe that in our current situation we have the privilege to talk too much. We must do what is needed and keep quiet,” he told reporters during a tour of the Golan Heights.
The magazine said U.S. officials were informed of the strike, but were not involved.
“The attack was a warning to Iran and other adversaries, showing Israel’s intelligence capability and its willingness to mount operations far beyond its borders in order to defend itself from gathering threats,” it said on its Web site (www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888352,00.html).
The closest Israel has come to an apparent public statement was last week, when outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel acted “wherever we can” against its enemies: “There’s no point getting into details — everyone can use his imagination.”
In further remarks yesterday, Olmert said that during his three-year term, Israel had carried out “security operations — some of them of dramatic value — whose details should remain classified.”
“Who dares wins — and we dared,” Olmert, invoking the motto of Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) commandos, said in a farewell speech to parliament, which convened to ratify Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government.
The Time magazine story, like others in the past week on the subject, was widely picked up by Israeli media, which operate under strict military censorship when reporting local security affairs.
On Friday, Sudan said it suspected Israel of two attacks on smuggling convoys in a remote northern region that killed up to 40 people. A foreign ministry spokesman said the vehicles hit in the raid were too small to be smuggling weapons.