Surgical Strike in Sudan - Updated

It sounds like a scene right out of the movies. You can basically pick your Hollywood plot line that leads to this incident today in Sudan.

An air strike on a car on Sudan's Red Sea coast killed its two passengers and destroyed the vehicle on Tuesday evening, the head of the state assembly told AFP.

"A plane bombed a small car which was coming from Port Sudan airport to the town... There were two people in the car and both were killed. The vehicle was completely destroyed," Mohammed Tahir said by telephone.

The unidentified plane, which struck at about 10:00 pm (1900 GMT), flew in from the Red Sea, to which it then returned, Tahir added.

There was no immediate word on the identity of the two dead passengers or on whose aircraft carried out the strike.

In a statement broadcast on Sudanese radio, a police spokesman confirmed that a missile was fired at a vehicle 15 kilometres (9 miles) south of Sudan's main port city, killing two, and that a team had been sent to investigate.

It has not been announced who was killed, but without any other details I think it is safe to assume this was an Israeli hit. I for one will not shed any tears, because whether it is Hollywood or the real world, when this type of thing happens it means the target was worth the political risk - which also means some evil dude was killed today.

BTW... it was not the US Navy, our aircraft carriers are off the coast of Pakistan, no longer in the Red Sea.

Update1: Maybe it was us after all, because this is an interesting new detail from Reuters (also other news agencies reporting)

The plane came in from the Red Sea and flew back after the bombing, Tahir said. The Sudanese Media Centre said the army responded with missiles that the foreign plane managed to evade.

"We heard three loud explosions," a source at Port Sudan airport told Reuters. "We went outside to see what was happening and eye witnesses told us they saw two helicopters which looked liked Apaches flying past."

A few thoughts here. If we are talking fighter jets, my money is still on Israel, but if helicopters were involved that means it could be the United States.

One possibility is that Cobra attack helicopters from the USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) conducted the strike. Operations of the USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) have been very quiet over the last few months, with sporadic reports the ship was in the northern Persian Gulf for a few months. It is relatively common these days for the US to keep a LPD in the region with attack helicopters on board, so the potential for Cobras on the LSD fits a historical pattern even if I do believe it would be slightly unusual.

Another real possibility though is that in the night sky what they really saw were MH-60S Knighthawks with Hellfires on the wings deployed from one of any number of potential Navy ships off Sudan. Looking up in the dark it is easy to see how MH-60S's would look a lot like Apache gunships. USS Mason (DDG 87) has been operating in the Gulf of Aden and could have made the trip to the Sudan fairly quickly.