Washington/Tel Aviv  - Israel carried out an airstrike in Sudan in January that killed 39 people, hitting a 17-truck convoy transporting arms earmarked for Gaza, the American network CBS reported Thursday.

A government minister in Sudan was accusing the United States Air Force of being behind the airstrike.

However, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported he had been told that Israeli aircraft carried out the attack. He said this was the "semi-official American version" of the event.

The Israeli military issued a statement, saying "Israel does not comment on these kind of publications."

According to CBS, Israeli intelligence was said to have discovered that weapons were being trucked through Sudan, heading north towards Egypt, whereupon they would cross the Sinai Desert and be smuggled into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

In January, the US signed an agreement with Israel that calls for an international effort to stop arms smuggling into Gaza.

The agreement came in the aftermath of a ferocious Israeli offensive in Gaza, launched December 27 in a bid to curb near-daily rocket and mortar attacks from the coastal salient at southern Israel, and ended unilaterally on January 13.

Some 1,417 Palestinians were killed in the offensive and over 5,000 injured. Thirteen Israelis also died.

In the airstrike in Sudan - said to have been "in a desert area northwest of Port Sudan city, near Mount al-Sha'anoon," according to SudanTribune. com - 39 people riding in 17 trucks were reportedly killed.

The first government official in Sudan to talk about it was the state minister for highways, Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem, who said: "A major power bombed small trucks carrying arms - burning all of them. It killed Sudanese, Eritreans, and Ethiopians and injured others."

CBS said that if Israeli airplanes did carry out the attack in Sudan, it would suggest that there is a shadow war against Hamas and its weapons sources that is wider than the Israeli or US government has revealed. (dpa)