Israel blamed for Sudan air attack

Satellite images of the aftermath of an explosion at a Sudanese weapons factory suggest the site was hit in an air strike, a US monitoring group says.

The Sudanese government has accused Israel of bombing its Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum last week, killing two people and leaving the factory in ruins.

The images released by the Satellite Sentinel Project showed six craters, 16-metres across, near the centre of Wednesday's explosion at the compound.

Military experts consulted by the project found the craters to be "consistent with large impact craters created by air-delivered munitions", Satellite Sentinel Project spokesman Jonathan Hutson said.

The target may have been about 40 shipping containers seen at the site in earlier images. The group said the craters were in the area where the containers had been stacked. It did not comment on the allegations of Israeli involvement or who might be behind the strikes.

Jonah Leff, who monitors Sudan for the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey and was not connected to the project, reviewed the images and agreed with the group's assessment.

Israeli officials have neither confirmed nor denied a strike on the site. Instead, they accused Sudan of playing a role in an Iranian-backed network of arms shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel believes Sudan is a key transit point in the circuitous route that weapons take to the militant groups in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Sudan was a major hub for al-Qaeda militants and remains a transit for weapon smugglers and African migrant traffickers. Israeli officials believe arms that originate in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas go through Sudan before crossing Egypt's Sinai desert and into Gaza through tunnels.

The Satellite Sentinel Project is a partnership between the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide advocacy group and DigitalGlobe, which operates three commercial satellites and provides analysis. The project was founded last year with support from actor George Clooney, and in the past has used satellite images to monitor the destruction of villages by Sudanese troops in the country's war zones.

Opened in 1996, Yarmouk is one of two known state-owned weapons manufacturing plants in the Sudanese capital. Sudan took pride in having a way to produce its own ammunition and weapons despite United Nations and United States sanctions.

The satellite images indicate that the Yarmouk area includes an oil storage facility, a military depot and an ammunition plant.

The monitoring group said the images indicated that the blast "destroyed two buildings and heavily damaged at least 21 others", adding that there was no indication of fire damage at the fuel depot.

The group said it could not be certain the containers, seen on October 12, were still there when the explosions took place. But the effects of the blast suggested a "highly volatile cargo" was at the epicentre of the blast.

Yarmouk is in a residential area of the city about 11 kilometres southwest of Khartoum International Airport.

Wednesday's explosion sent ammunition flying into homes in the neighbourhood adjacent to the factory, causing panic among residents. Sudanese officials said some people suffered from smoke inhalation.

In the aftermath of the massive blast, Sudanese officials said the government had the right to respond to what the information minister said was a "flagrant attack" by Israel on Sudan's sovereignty and right to strengthen its military capabilities.

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has likened the incident to the 1998 bombing by the US of a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory linked to al-Qaeda.

Some Israeli commentators suggested that if Israel did indeed carry out an air strike causing the blast, it might have been a trial run for an operation in Iran. Both countries are about 1,600 kilometres away from Israel.