On the 20th of August 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Sudan's Al Shifa factory, which produced 90% of the country's pharmaceuticals. Germany’s ambassador to Sudan at the time, Werner Daum, stated that the loss of the factory resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands from treatable diseases.

The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, based on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved with processing the deadly nerve agent VX, and had ties with the Islamist al-Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden.

These justifications for the bombing were disputed by the owners of the plant, the Sudanese government, and other governments.

American officials later acknowledged "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed.

Officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s.