OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00PM
SUDANESE head of state Omar el-Beshir on Friday lashed out at US President Bill Clinton for ordering a military strike on Khartoum, and said his country will take the matter to the United Nations.
The US overnight launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles at “terrorist” targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. The al-Shifaa pharmaceutical plant, which the US claims was a chemical weapons facility, in Khartoum North was destroyed. No deaths or injuries have been announced.
On Friday morning, Sudanese protesters scaled the fence of the closed US embassy to burn the US flag and shout their anger. Protesters shouted “Down, down USA”, and “We are ready to defend the faith,” Sudanese television reported.
The Sudanese government has declared the raid on the plant “a criminal act.” Beshir said Sudan will ask the United Nations to set up “a commission to verify the nature of the activity of the plant.”
Beshir hit out at Clinton for saying the plant was used to make chemical weapons. “Putting out lies is not new for the United States and its president. A person of such immorality will not hesitate to tell any lie,” he said, accusing the US president of using the military strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan to “cover up the [Monica Lewinsky] scandal”.
Meanwhile, Sudanese opposition sources in Cairo said that the US air strikes targeted two chemical weapons factories in the Sudanese capital. “According to information that has reached us from Khartoum, not only the al-Shifaa factory was targeted, but so was another underground factory in the suburb of Kafouri, also in Khartoum Bahari,” a section of the capital, Sudanese opposition spokesman Faruq Ahmed Adam said in Cairo.
Earlier, the opposition spokesman said that al-Shifaa factory “is used for making chemical weapons with the help of foreign experts, notably Iraqis.”