Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart describes the surgical precision of the attack on a car in Port Sudan and says that the strike indicates a sophisticated operator.

Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

On the evening of April 5, a small car exploded shortly after leaving the airport in Port Sudan. This case looks like it was a targeted assassination. Let's look at the details now. It would appear that this attack was guided by excellent intelligence. The attack utilized the correct ordinance needed to get the desired effect, which was killing the occupants of the car without causing a lot of collateral damage. Usually that sort of elegant attack indicates that it was a sophisticated operation and that it was conducted by a sophisticated actor. Generally that's not the sort of attack that one would associate with the Sudanese air force, which really doesn't have the capability to conduct that sort of surgical strike and certainly not one after dark. Therefore, it was probably conducted by an outside actor, such as the United States or Israel. From the damage that we're able to see on the vehicle, it looks like it was indeed struck from above. This would indicate that this was an attack conducted with a missile and not an IED that had been placed in the car. The fact that the Sudanese government has claimed and really laid blame for the attack upon the Israelis would tend to indicate that they know the identities of the victims and it is very likely that those victims were members of Hamas, the Palestinian radical organization. In the past, Israel has conducted airstrikes against targets in Sudan and near Port Sudan. For example, last March a convoy of nineteen vehicles in Sudan that appears to have been headed towards the Gaza Strip was struck by a large constellation of Israeli aircraft and totally destroyed. It is believed that those vehicles contained weapons that were destined for Hamas. However, this strike was much smaller than that and could have just been carried out by a single aircraft or perhaps even an unmanned aerial vehicle. Israel has long conducted a program of taking out Hamas militants, specifically those militants who are responsible for planning and conducting attacks against targets in Israel or Israeli targets overseas. Of course once the identity of the victims is ascertained that will allow us to really have a better idea who conducted it. If it was indeed a Hamas target, then it very likely was Israel. However, if it turns out that that these were Al Qaeda targets, then it's possible that this attack was conducted by U.S. forces based out of Djibouti.