An air strike on a car on Sudan's Red Sea coast killed its two passengers and destroyed the vehicle on Tuesday evening, the head of the state assembly told AFP.

"A plane bombed a small car which was coming from Port Sudan airport to the town... There were two people in the car and both were killed. The vehicle was completely destroyed," Mohammed Tahir said by telephone.

The unidentified plane, which struck at about 10:00 pm (1900 GMT), flew in from the Red Sea, to which it then returned, Tahir added.

There was no immediate word on the identity of the two dead passengers or on whose aircraft carried out the strike.

In January 2009, foreign aircraft bombed a convoy of trucks in eastern Sudan, near the Egyptian border.

US and Israeli media reported that the trucks were carrying weapons to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, to supply Palestinian militants during Israel's devastating three-week offensive against the territory.

Sudanese officials claimed the convoy had been transporting illegal immigrants to Egypt.

Hamas has close ties with Khartoum and has long maintained a base in Sudan, to which the group's exiled chief Khaled Meshaal is a frequent visitor.

Speaking at an Islamic conference in the Sudanese capital last month, Meshaal hailed the sweeping political changes in Egypt, which he said had given the Palestinian people their lives back, and called for renewed struggle against the Jewish state.

Just a few days later, a private Egyptian TV channel broadcast unconfirmed reports that the Egyptian army had shelled a convoy of vehicles laden with arms near the Sudanese border.

Israeli officials have expressed concern about suspected arms smuggling through Sudan.

But the Israeli military had no immediate comment on Tuesday's air strike.

The United States maintains a counterterrorism base in Djibouti which has been active against Al-Qaeda suspects on both sides of the Red Sea but its reported strikes against jihadist targets are all said to have involved drones.