Israel’s Sudan Bombing Report Is Likely Nonsense

March 26, 2009

Israeli warplanes conducted air strike on arms smugglers in Sudan: CBS headlines Haaretz and Google shows 1,200 related news articles.

I believe these to be nonsense.

From the Jerusalem Post piece on this:

As Israeli troops battled Palestinian gunmen during Operation Cast Lead in an attempt to end the rocket threat to southern Israel, IAF warplanes conducted a mission with similar objectives far from the front in the Gaza Strip, a CBS report revealed on Wednesday.

The report quoted unidentified American officials as saying that in January, Israeli warplanes bombed a convoy of trucks carrying arms destined for Hamas through Sudan.

The CBS report was not really a 'report'. It was this blog post by CBS reporter Dan Raviv about a March 24 piece from the Paris-based non-profit (financed by whom?) Sudan Tribune website which has as its sole source an alleged report by the Egyptian Al-Shurooq newspaper which I do not find on the web. The Sudan Tribune writes:

The Egyptian Al-Shurooq newspaper reported this week that US planes destroyed a convoy heading towards the borders carrying arms believed to be on its way to Gaza strip.

The report said that the convoy consisted of 17 trucks carrying 39 passengers that were all destroyed in the operation. None of the people on board the trucks survived the attack.

Reading the Sudan Tribune piece which alleges that U.S. bombers hit something in Sudan, CBS' Dan Raviv asked the CBS national security correspondent David Martin:

[T]he semi-official American version of the story is very different.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has been told that Israeli aircraft carried out the attack. Israeli intelligence is said to have discovered that weapons were being trucked through Sudan, heading north toward Egypt, whereupon they would cross the Sinai Desert and be smuggled into Hamas-held territory in Gaza.

'Has been told' by whom? There is no source named for David Martin's assertion that Israeli air planes did something in Sudan. Were these 'American officials' as the Jerusalem Post asserts? The CBS blog post does not say that at all. It says a 'semi-official American version' whatever that may mean. Was the source that gave the 'semi-official American version' American or from Israel?

Dan Raviv is known to have intelligence contacts:

The start of his on-air career was his assignment in the Tel Aviv bureau, from 1978 to 1980 … He is also the author of several books, including the 1990 best seller Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community and Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance, both co-authored with journalist Yossi Melman.

Yossi Melman is a Haaretz correspondent.

We proved on a earlier occasion that the Sudan Tribune website is a unreliable source. Back then it invented Iranian submarines and long range missiles at an Eritrean port. Generally it tends to add its own fantasies to reports it picks up from other sites.

So we have a unreliable, non-profit online paper's second hand reporting from an inaccessible Egyptian newspaper. This then gets seasoned with some un-sourced rumor by a CBS blog writer with Israeli intelligence contacts and hyped into "news" reports around the world.

This smells, feels and sounds like some 'information operation' by some interested circles. I believe it is pure propaganda, but like usual probably with some true kernel we may or may not learn about.

UPDATE – AlJazeerah adds some confusion:

A Sudanese minister has told Al Jazeera that the US launched two air raids in the country earlier this year.

Mabrouk Mubarak Salim, the state minister for highways, said on Thursday that Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans were killed in the attacks in January and February.

…
However, Deng Alor, the Sudanese foreign minister, said in Egypt on Wednesday that he had no knowledge of any such air raid.

"We have no information about such an attack," he said.

…
Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist, told Al Jazeera that his Israeli and US sources backed up the CBS take on event.

Bergman said that weapons are smuggled to Gaza either from Syria though the Sinai peninsula or from Iran via Sudan.

Take a map and check how to smuggle from Syria through the Sinai to Gaza …

This is the same Ronen Bergman who has "unprecedented access to extra-ordinary sources from top to bottom in the Mossad and intelligence agencies around the world" and who's sensational book about an alleged Syrian reactor was the base of a plagiarized story we dissected here yesterday.

Could AlJazeerah please find sources that are not Israeli intelligence when looking into such issues?

Posted by b on March 26, 2009 at 13:16 UTC | Permalink

Comments

that was my take too, esp as i watched others pick up on the ST article as their only source. nearly 40 people killed, including eritreans & ethiopians, and we’re just hearing about it now? please.

Posted by: b real | Mar 26 2009 14:19 utc | 1

It is not about Sudan, it the Sudan-Hamas connection.

Posted by: Anon | Mar 26 2009 15:19 utc | 2

It’s quite possible there has been a US raid on Sudan. But there are several possible targets that would be everything but weapons-to-Gaza BS. Weapons shipment to Somalia, to some Ethiopian muslim rebels, to some militias in Darfur ou S. Sudan, or to some other neighboring country’s rebels; or just some alleged terrorist group. And it’s also possible that the target wasn’t what it was supposed to be but was perfectly harmless – drug factory, goat-herders, wedding party or anything else.
But shipment to Gaza doesn’t make sense. They would still have to go through Egyptian border to get in, so why the long road when you can just send them through the Mediterranean from Syria to Egypt?

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Mar 26 2009 15:45 utc | 3

> Take a map and check how to smuggle from Syria through
> the Sinai to Gaza …
Most obviously, by sea from Syria to Sinai (or elsewhere in Egypt), and then across the Egypt/Gaza border to Gaza. This does raise the question of why not smuggle directly by sea to Gaza; the answer might depend on the ease of evading the Israeli naval patrols there as compared to the ease of smuggling across the Egypt/Gaza land border.

Posted by: Boris | Mar 26 2009 15:48 utc | 4

machine translation of the orig source

U.S. air strike on the Sudan-bound weapons aimed at a convoy to Gaza
American planes destroyed a convoy of trucks was told it was loaded with weapons and headed to the Egyptian border, on suspicion that they smuggled to Sinai, as a prelude to bring through tunnels into the Gaza Strip in late January.
The informed sources told Al «sunrise»: The convoy included 17 vehicles, and the number of passengers who were 39 people.
The bombing was so powerful that the car had been burnt, all passengers, who did not survive one of them.
The intensity of the shelling, the rockets fired left 18-hole diameters ranging between 160 and 430 meters.
The sources said this is the first major operation was a foiled attempt to smuggle arms into Gaza, pursuant to Security Council resolution on the cease-fire in Gaza, and the prohibition of trade and export of arms into Gaza, and the implementation of the security agreement was signed between the governments of America and Israel.
An agreement which required the United States in cooperation with NATO and other actors to stop arms smuggling into Gaza, through East Africa and the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea, in addition to the cooperation of intelligence to identify the sources of weapons, particularly from Sudan and Iran.
And informed the representative of «sunrise» that the incident took place at the end of the month of January, in a desert area in north-west of the city of Port Sudan, near the Mount Alcanon.
The Tktemth the Khartoum government, which has not been able to identify where they came from the United States aircraft, as well as the bombing that took place within its borders, which caused major embarrassment.
The official source said that U.S. fighter jets carried out the process in place in several countries in the region.
Likely that those sources may be those fighters out of Eritrea or Djibouti.
The sources said that there had been high-level contacts between Cairo and Khartoum have been associated with this topic, which combines the Sudanese government is still studying the details of how to deal with him.
As though they seek to control the networks and the pursuit of weapons smuggling, but it is a U.S. bombing attack on its territory.
The sources added that the U.S. base at Djibouti (Camp Imonner) play a key role in the fight against the so-called terrorism, and in the support and backing.
The 1800 rule that U.S. troops, and hundreds of special forces elements, which was focusing on the seven countries as the U.S. military command stations to terrorist elements, and these countries are: Yemen, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti.
As part of this force, there is a common unit is the CTF-150, which is shared by both France and Spain, Germany and Britain with the United States military vessels are covered by joint patrols in addition to the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
And informed the representative of «sunrise» that the Sudanese authorities have prepared a comprehensive file on the subject, which included graphic details of the theater and the remains of the raid, with the quantities of munitions, which burned some others did not burn, and C 4 rifles, Kalashnikov rifles, in addition to a number of mobile phones a «rich», which appeared to be the mode of communication between the elements of the Arab tribes in northern Sudan, which was smuggling, and their counterparts in the Sinai, which was the receipt and delivery of arms into the Gaza Strip.
The «sunrise» had indicated a few days ago to a secret meeting at the Foreign Office was attended by representatives of American and 8 European countries and NATO members, and participants agreed at the meeting to combat the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.
The side of the security agreement, which was rejected out of hand, Egypt, between Israel and the United States and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the former with its Israeli counterpart.
He pledged that the U.S. side in the fight against arms smuggling.
The British Foreign Office officials did not disclose the mechanism by which they will be applied by the States that have agreed to combat the smuggling of weapons, sources said at the time that these countries emphasized the non-use of force in tracking shipments of weapons or the pursuit of the forfeiture, and the Agreement and the actions are not directed to the Arab countries which is not consistent with the latter process, which was in the northwest of the city of Port Sudan.
One of the supposed secret meeting, according to abide by international law and as permitted by the national authorities in the States to support efforts to intercept smuggling, and that the procedures include investigation, boarding, inspection, arrest and confiscation of weapons.
He admitted one of the sources of «sunrise» at the time that the countries that have agreed to halt the weapons program does not have an international mandate for the rally, but the source pointed out that part of the bilateral initiatives between the United States and Britain to reach a peaceful settlement to the crisis in the Gaza Strip.
The countries which have signed this agreement in the meeting the British Foreign Office in early March the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway.

Posted by: b real | Mar 26 2009 16:11 utc | 5

off off topic.
My fifth son just traveled from San Diego to San Francisco, aren’t those Spanish words beautiful? In the way he saw two California condors and took their pictures. Those birds have been brought back from extinction through a very laborious undertaking. Are the dollars spent rearing condors better spent than those that killed Iranians Afghanis or Iraquis?
Think of it, bringing back to life instead of killing. Life life life.

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 26 2009 16:33 utc | 6

Thanks b real – any idea of what the political background of that paper is? State run? Private? How big an audience?

Posted by: b | Mar 26 2009 16:39 utc | 7

The Sudan Tribune piece includes this:

The Sudanese state minister for highways Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem told reporters at a press conference in the Eastern city of Kassala near Eritrea that a “major power bombed small trucks carrying arms burring all of them”.

I see nothing of that in the translation of the Egyptian piece reproduced above. Another Sudan Trib invention?

Posted by: b | Mar 26 2009 18:33 utc | 8

Michael Dunn is not dismissing the story altogether.

Posted by: ptw | Mar 26 2009 19:15 utc | 9

Thanks pwt – he is certainly asking the right questions:

The Sudanese official’s remarks raise several questions in my mind:
1. The Minister of State for Highways? He’s the one to voice international protests?
2. “Sudanese, Ethiopians, and Eritreans.” Ethiopia and Eritrea must have really patched up their deadly territorial quarrels when I wasn’t looking, or we’re talking about radical Islamist groups that transcend borders.
3. The newspaper and Sudanese Minister’s reports don’t seem to specify when this happened, but the CBS report puts it in January during Operation Cast Lead. Why, then, are we just hearing about it now? Could this relate to — surely not? — ‘Umar al-Bashir’s problems with the International Criminal Court? Suddenly what Sudan found an embarrassing breach of its sovereignty may help gain it sympathy, especially if it blames the US?
…
There are, however, some curious things about this story. If the convoy was passing through the coastal region of Sudan, northwest of Port Sudan, the assumption is that it would be proceeding through Egyptian territory and then Sinai, before infiltrating the alleged armaments into Gaza. Given the fact that Israel and Egypt have diplomatic relations, fairly close intelligence ties via Omar Suleiman and that Egypt is not eager to see Hamas strengthened as they see it as a domestic threat in Egypt, why not simply wait until the convoy was in Egypt, and then let the Egyptians know in no uncertain terms that you knew it was there and saw it as a threat to the peace? Assuming the Egyptian government was unaware of the shipment (and if they were aware, there’s a whole differeent issue at stake), why not let them take care of it? On the other hand, perhaps they planned to ship the arms by sea to some clandestine spot in the Sinai. But if it was going to go by sea, why not strike it at sea? The clear violation of Sudanese sovereignty suggests one of two things: whoever (US or Israel) carried out the strike wanted to do it on Sudanese soil. Port Sudan is a long way from Gaza. But it does send a message.

I’ll stay with my judgment – the report is bogus disinformation.

Posted by: b | Mar 26 2009 20:07 utc | 10

From the Haaretz article linked to in Dunn’s second update:

According to the report, 39 people riding in the 17-truck convoy were killed, while a number of civilians in the area were injured.
Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny whether Israel had been involved in an air strike in Sudan.
The Sudanese politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the strike took place in a remote area of east Sudan but did not say who carried it out.
Sudanese State Minister Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem was quoted in the Paris-based Sudan Tribune Web site as saying that a “major power bombed small trucks carrying arms, burning all of them.”
The strike “killed Sudanese, Eritreans and Ethiopians, and injured others,” Saleem added.
The two Sudanese politicians who knew about the January attack said it was still unclear where the aircraft came from. But one of the sources, a senior politician from eastern Sudan, said his colleagues had spoken to a survivor of the raid.
“There was an Ethiopian fellow, a mechanic. He was the only one who survived. He said they came in two planes. They passed over them then came back and they shot the cars. He couldn’t tell the nationality of the aircraft … The aircraft destroyed the vehicles. There were four or five vehicles,” he said.
The politician added that the route, in a desert region northwest of Port Sudan on the Red Sea cost, was regularly used by groups smuggling weapons into Egypt.
“Everyone knows they are smuggling weapons to the southern part of Egypt,” he said.

Bernhard, your analysis of these “news” reports is much appreciated.

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 26 2009 20:20 utc | 11

b @7
i grabbed the link from #2’s post. never seen it before. spent some time searching for it on tuesday after i saw the rpt in the ST but the spelling doesn’t match
this blogger writes that it’s a “relatively new Egyptian newspaper” here and even links to a followup “alleging that US Air Force raids had claimed 300 lives.” like most everyone, i remain very skeptical but am curious what the purpose of it is

Posted by: b real | Mar 27 2009 2:08 utc | 12

machine translation of that followup
U.S. planes resumed bombing of the Sudan … 300 Sudanese and killed in the raids in two months

Signed a new U.S. raid in the east of Sudan, the targeted aircraft trucks loaded with arms said to be on their way to Sinai in preparation for smuggling through tunnels into the Gaza Strip, and continued bombing operations, according to Sudanese sources informed until yesterday morning.
Awad said Mubarak, Deputy Secretary-General of the Eastern Front, said the shelling started in the areas of smuggling almost two months ago and still continues, pointing out that the victims have reached 300 so far from the Sudan.
He added that the motivation of the people of the east in the smuggling and trafficking of weapons is to get the money «to address the lack of development.
Mabrouk Mubarak acknowledged Salim, Secretary-General of the Eastern Front for the existence of weapons smuggling operations conducted by the Eastern Sudan, and said they are continuing to address this issue in several ways have been agreed upon at the General Conference of the Party, the Free Lions, an organization of the rebel movement turned their weapons into a political party, after that with the Sudanese government signed the agreement in Asmara in 2006.
Al «sunrise» sources said that the file of the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from the Sudan was one of the files, which have been discussed during the mutual visits between officials in both Egypt and Sudan, the source said Egyptian officials had visited the confidentiality of «very» Sudan to the east of the Government of respect for the discretion Sudan on the issue.
…
The «sunrise» might be mentioned on the disclosure of a U.S. air strike took place in January this year, targeting a convoy of 17 trucks, a car, was completely destroyed and 39 people were killed accompany them, on suspicion of carrying weapons en route to Gaza through the tunnels on the Egyptian border.
Received «sunrise» 15 picture of the effects of the raids, but they are not suitable for publication for reasons of printing.
…
The following source in Khartoum on the reasons for the diversion of the news long after the discretion as an attempt by the Sudanese president to mobilize the Arab public opinion and support for Islamic rule in the face of the International Criminal Court for his arrest on charges of war crimes in Darfur, in suggesting that the United States wants to punish him because of aid to Hamas .

Posted by: b real | Mar 27 2009 2:29 utc | 13

Jerusalem Post article updated 3/27 on bombings in Sudan says Iranian boat was completely destroyed by bombings and quotes State Minister for Highways with new version of land attack saying that people were in the convoy, not weapons, and up to 800 killed.

…Sudanese State Minister for Highways Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem said that American aircraft had carried out the first attack.
Saleem, who spoke to Al Jazeera on Thursday, was quoted by Israel Radio as having said that the death toll in the bombing was much higher than initial reports, and stood at 800 people. He also claimed that the trucks were filled with people, and did not contain weapons.
Snip
Saleem’s statement was in stark contradiction to a Sudanese Tribune report from earlier this week in which he was quoted as saying that a “major power bombed small trucks carrying arms, burning all of them.” He added that the raid killed “Sudanese, Eritreans and Ethiopians, and injured others.”

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 28 2009 2:58 utc | 14

from the arabist, a little more On al-Shorouk itself

Posted by: b real | Mar 28 2009 20:15 utc | 15

It is all about arms trade, to create fever, so men like alBashir buy more weapons, and declacre more wars, creating wars and unstability around the world is great business for some humans…

Posted by: ras babi abdalla babiker | Mar 29 2009 3:14 utc | 16

Video footage supplied to Al Jazeera by a Sudanese intelligence source showed a number of burned-out and badly damaged vehicles lying in an expanse of desert.

Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2009 4:14 utc | 17

still smells
time: How Israel Foiled an Arms Convoy Bound for Hamas

Israeli fighter-bombers, backed by unmanned drones, were responsible for a mid-January attack on a 23-truck convoy in the Sudanese desert carrying arms to Hamas militants, two highly-placed Israeli security sources revealed to TIME. 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.
The sources revealed exclusive details about the bold air attack on what they said was an Iranian weapons convoy, which had been transporting rockets and explosives destined for Gaza during the Israeli assault on the small Palestinian territory. They denied earlier news reports that U.S. aircraft had been involved in the attack on the arms convoy as it crossed at night through the Sudanese desert heading for Egypt’s poorly guarded border. “The Americans were notified that Israel was going to conduct an air operation in Sudan, but they were not involved,” a source said. He denied prior claims by a U.S. television network that a ship and a second convoy were destroyed. “There was only one raid, and it was a major operation,” he said, adding that “dozens of aircraft” were used.
F-16 fighter-bombers carried out two runs on the convoy, while F-15 fighter planes circled overhead as a precaution in case hostile aircraft were scrambled from Khartoum or a nearby country. After the first bombing run, drones mounted with high-resolution cameras passed over the burning trucks. The video showed that the convoy had only been partially damaged, so the Israelis ordered a second pass with the F-16s. During the 1,750-mile (2800 km) journey to Sudan and back, the Israeli aircraft refueled in midair over the Red Sea.

Posted by: b real | Mar 31 2009 16:18 utc | 18

@b real – smells a lot – the alleged drones Hermes-450 do not have the leg to do such a mission and can not refuel in the air. But that is just one of a myriad of details that do not make sense. The red sea area is full of warships and each of them would have seen such an attack on its radar.
But both, Sudan’s Bashir as Israel’s Olmert have incentives to make the world believe this happened. Olmert to show that he did get results on Cast Lead and to prepare his comeback and Bashir to show the Arabs that he deserves their protection.
So there is no trustable source on this at all. It stinks to heaven.

Posted by: b | Mar 31 2009 18:40 utc | 19

“Could AlJazeerah please find sources that are not Israeli intelligence when looking into such issues?”
There has been a distinct editorial shift in Al Jazeera since the bloodless coup. The arabic language Al Jazeera site seems less affected but why is Google’s arabic-to-english translator so bad…

Posted by: Maff | Apr 4 2009 7:35 utc | 20

Gideon Levy also thinks the story is fishy & says so in Haaretz. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really bring any evidence to bear to refute the claims that the attack happened. But he’s a really superb source & I trust him implicitly.

Posted by: Richard Silverstein | Apr 5 2009 8:42 utc | 21

Thanks Richard, welcome at the bar.
I saw the Levy piece and was a bit frustrated with it.

The imagination-sparking report fit in well with Olmert’s end-of-term celebrations. Everyone, including Olmert himself, spread broad hints about Israel’s secret operations during his term, as a sign of his prowess in office. The sweet memories of taking over the boat Karine A at sea, assassinating Imad Mugniyeh (according to foreign sources, of course) and the mysterious shelling in Syria have barely faded. And suddenly we have Sudan.
A supply convoy, no less, with dozens of trucks carrying arms from Iran, no less, including a boat at sea, no less, making their way to Gaza were bombed, and several dozen people were killed.
Nobody knows for sure what was bombed, how much and why.

My questions are
a. was there some bombing at all?
and
b. if there was some bombing who did it?
Levy seems to believe that it was really Israel that did something. I doubt that.
But maybe the mandatory military censor cut out some parts of Levy’s piece.

Posted by: b | Apr 5 2009 11:23 utc | 22

the shift in al jazeera – is most obvious in their take on latin america but also africa but also evident on their own turf – their demonisation of progressive forces is indeed a mirror of american media. with the exception of marwan bishara(?) & certain of their documentaries it is no more worth watching than cnn
press tv is farm more readable, has better sources & interviews important figures & lets them speak

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 5 2009 18:32 utc | 23

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