20120523
AFP
One person was killed when a car exploded on Sudan's Red Sea coast on Tuesday, state media reported, about a year after Sudan blamed Israel for an air strike in the same region.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the blast, which witnesses said left two holes in the road.

"A car exploded inside Port Sudan and the body of the driver was burned completely. Police are investigating," Radio Omdurman reported.

The official SUNA news agency identified the driver as Nassir Awadallah Ahmed Saeed, 65, a Port Sudan businessman.

Photographs from the scene showed the entire right side of the vehicle blackened and mangled, with the four-door passenger compartment incinerated and the roof apparently torn away.

Witnesses told AFP the blast occurred just before 8:00 am (0500 GMT) on the western edge of Port Sudan town.

"I heard a big explosion and I came out and saw a Prado car on fire, and two holes in the ground," said one resident.

A second resident gave a similar account.

In April last year, Sudan said it had irrefutable evidence that Israeli attack helicopters carried out a missile and machine gun strike on a car about 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Port Sudan.

Two Sudanese in the car were killed, Sudan's foreign ministry said at the time, denying the country was harbouring Islamic militant groups.

Israel refused to comment on that incident, which made the front pages of all major newspapers in the Jewish state.

Israeli officials had previously expressed concern about arms smuggling through Sudan, which has close ties with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

Last year's attack mirrored a similar strike by foreign aircraft on a truck convoy reportedly laden with weapons in eastern Sudan in January 2009.

Sudan, which is suffering from economic crisis, has been seeking an end to US economic sanctions first imposed in 1997 partly over its alleged support for blacklisted terrorist groups.