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Israeli media name Hamas target in Sudan strike

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The Hebrew website Maariv is now reporting that Palestinian security sources have said that one of the two passengers killed in Port Sudan on Tuesday, reportedly by Israel, was a Hamas official, Abd-al Latif Ashkar. Latif Ashkar, a resident of Damascus, has been described as the successor to Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, who was assassinated in Dubai last year, and was chief of Hamas’s smuggling operation from Iran to Gaza. Sudanese officials accused Israel of carrying out an air strike on its territory on Tuesday. A car with two passengers was struck from the air in the Port Sudan area at 9pm local time earlier this week.

Israeli officials have refused to comment on the attack. Jerusalem has long accused the Omar al-Bashir regime in Sudan of allowing Iran to use their territory as a vital transit point for weaponry on its way to the Hamas enclave in Gaza. According to media reports, Israel has carried out previous strikes on arms convoys in Sudan, though this has never been officially confirmed. An analysis in today’s Haaretz on the incident located it within the context of what it called Israel’s ‘covert war’ against Iranian arms smuggling to its enemies, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Time magazine, meanwhile, yesterday quoted an unnamed ‘senior Israeli military official,’ who confirmed that Israel was behind the air strike on Tuesday.