A correspondent for US television network CBS said on his blog that 39 people were killed in the strike which came hot on the heels of Israel's devastating three-week offensive against the Islamist rulers of Gaza at the turn of the year.

"A convoy of vehicles carrying illegal weapons was bombed near the Sudanese-Egyptian border in mid-January," state transport minister Mabruk Mubarak Saleem told AFP, adding that several people had been killed.

Saleem later told Al-Jazeera satellite television that the weapons were headed for Gaza.

The minister, who is a former commander of the Eastern Front rebel group that signed an October 2006 peace deal with Khartoum ending decades of civil war, said that arms smuggling remained rampant in the region because of the marginalisation of his Rashidiya Arab tribe.

"Rashidiya tribesmen engage in this illegal trade because they're so poor," Saleem said.

The CBS correspondent said that it was Israeli aircraft that carried out the attack on the 17 trucks killing 39 people. It cited Pentagon sources as denying earlier reports that the warplanes were American.

The Israeli army refused to confirm or deny any involvement.

"We are not in the habit of reacting to this sort of report," an army spokesman said.

In a speech later in the day in the coastal town of Herzliya, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said "we operate in many places near and far, and carry out strikes in a manner that strengthens our deterrence."

"We operate anywhere we can target terror infrastructure. There is no point in going into details, anyone can use his imagination."

In Israel the air strike dominated news coverage on both public and army radios and all the main papers.

The liberal daily Haaretz cited Israeli security sources as saying that an international network had been set up in which smugglers moved arm caches from Iran through the Gulf to Yemen, across the Red Sea to Sudan and then on through Egypt to Gaza.

"If the reports are true, the bombing in Sudan was an important message of deterrence from Israel to Iran," the paper said in an analysis.

"The timing of the operation --- not long after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza -- is indicative of the importance which Israel places in its execution," it said.

"If the powers that be decide that it is worth taking the risk and striking targets some 1,400 kilometres (900 miles) outside of Israel's borders, then it would appear that Israel believed Iran is seeking to supply Gaza with significant armaments."

Former air force chief Eitan Ben Eliyahu told army radio that the reported Sudan raid showed "it is still too early to draw up a final assessment of Operation Cast Lead (Israel's Gaza offensive).

"One of the essential elements of this operation was the strengthening of cooperation, particularly with the United States, to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas," the reserve general said.

On January 16, just two days before Israel and Hamas implemented separate ceasefires, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement with then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to work together against arms smuggling to Gaza.

As well as naval patrols off Gaza's Mediterranean coast, the agreement also provides for intelligence sharing.

In recent weeks, the Israeli premier has alluded to a series of "major operations" carried out during his term of office that he has declined to detail.

In another still unexplained incident, warplanes bombed five fishing boats off Sudan's Red Sea coast on January 16, wounding 25 people, Sudanese security sources told AFP.

An international conference on preventing arms smuggling to Gaza is due to be held in Ottawa in May.

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