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Warplanes bombed a Sudanese munitions factory Wednesday in Khartoum, setting off massive explosions and sending plumes of smoke roiling into the night sky.

Sudan immediately blamed Israel, which was coy about whether it had launched the attack. “There is nothing,” Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said, “I can say about this subject.”

Israel has previously sent its fighter-bombers on deep-strike operations against Sudanese truck convoys carrying weapons suspected of being destined for the Gaza Strip.

Some Israeli media claimed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards owned the Khartoum munitions factory south of the Sudanese capital that was struck in the audacious, long-range attack.

After the munitions-site bombing, enraged Sudanese officials vowed unspecified retaliation. “Israel is a country of injustice that needs to be deterred,” Vice-President Ali Osman Taha told a Sudanese crowd hours after the attack. Next to him was Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir, who faces an international indictment for genocide.