US official killed in Sudan shooting

A US official and his driver were killed in a pre-dawn shooting in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Tuesday but the authorities insisted it was not a terrorist attack.

"Early this morning, January 1, 2008, in Khartoum, Sudan, an American officer with the United States Agency for International Development was shot and wounded," the US embassy said in a statement.

"A locally employed Sudanese national was killed in the same incident. This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away. We are working closely with local authorities to investigate the incident."

It was not immediately clear if it was a targeted attack against the official, identified by USAID as 33-year-old John Granville, or a random criminal shooting.

Sudan's foreign ministry however insisted the attack was "an isolated incident which has no political connotations."

The interior ministry said the diplomatic car had been caught in a fight which broke out as some Sudanese nationals were on the street celebrating the New Year.

An anonymous official quoted by the Sudanese Media Centre, which is close to the intelligence services, said there was "no evidence of an organised terrorist act."

Relations between Sudan and the United States have long been strained, most recently over the near five-year conflict in the western region of Darfur where Washington has accused Khartoum of genocide.

In September, the US embassy issued a travel warning alerting its citizens that the government had received indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western interests in Sudan.

Sudan's interior ministry said the embassy vehicle was fired on by unidentified gunmen in another car at 3:57 am (0057 GMT) as it drove through the residential area of Ryad in western Khartoum.

The Sudanese driver, identified as Abdel Rahman Abbas, 40, was killed instantly in a hail of gunfire, it said.

"The occupants of the vehicle opened fire on the side of the driver who was killed instantly while the other passenger was shot five times in the hand, right shoulder and stomach," it said.

USAID said on his website that Granville was working on a programme to bring radios to the population of south Sudan, according to the USAID website.

The interior ministry said it was launching in investigation to find the culprits and the motivation behind the shooting.

It occurred just a day after US President George W. Bush signed a law aimed at piling economic pressure on the government in Khartoum.

It also came a day after a new joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping in Dafur from an AU mission which failed to stem nearly five years of conflict.

The United States accuses Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur where at least 200,000 people have been killed as a result of the conflict, according to UN figures.

"My administration will continue its efforts to bring about significant improvements in the conditions in Sudan through sanctions against the government of Sudan and high-level diplomatic engagement and by supporting the deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur," Bush said in a statement.

More than two million people have also fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated regime in February 2003.

The government's response was to back the Arab Janjaweed militia and give it free rein to crack down on the rebels and their suspected civilian supporters.

The United States is the leading international donor to Sudan and has contributed nearly 2.9 billion dollars for humanitarian programmes in Sudan and eastern Chad since 2004.

In 1998, the United States launched cruise missile strikes against Khartoum following the bombings of US embassies in east Africa, attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda.

AFP

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