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American diplomat, driver killed after attack on car in Khartoum

— PHOTO: AP

RULE OF THE GUN: Darfur rebels in their northern desert stronghold of Bir Maza in Sudan, in this recent photo.

KHARTOUM (Sudan): A U.S. diplomat shot here while riding in a car early on Tuesday died of injuries sustained in the attack, which also killed the official’s Sudanese driver, the U.S. Embassy said.

The shooting came a day after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Sudan’s Darfur region. But it was not immediately known if the motive for the attack was political.

“This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away,” said Walter Braunohler, the public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum.

Mr. Braunohler said the diplomat, whose name was not released by the embassy, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Sudanese Interior Ministry identified the wounded American as a humanitarian aid official and said he was shot five times in the hand, shoulder and belly. The diplomat underwent surgery following the attack, according to the ministry’s statement.

The ministry identified the Sudanese driver who was killed as 40-year-old Abdel Rahman Abbas and said the attack occurred around 4 a.m. local time on Tuesday as the car was heading to a western suburb of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

Both U.S. and Sudanese officials said they were investigating the incident but could not yet provide details on the circumstances surrounding the attack.

The Sudanese state news agency SUNA quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying the incident was “isolated and has no political or ideological connotations” and pledged to bring the culprits to justice.

The Sudan Media Centre, which has close links to the government, cited an unidentified government official as saying the attack was criminal in motive and that there was “no grain of suspicion of an organised terrorist action.”

But Mr. Braunohler, the U.S. embassy press officer, said it was “too early to tell” if the attack was Al-Qaeda or terror-related.

Crime is fairly high in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, although much lower than in other east African cities like Nairobi, Kenya.

The shooting came a day after a new hybrid peacekeeping force took over in Darfur — a long-awaited change that is intended to be the strongest effort yet to solve the world’s worst humanitarian crisis but which already is struggling.

Though Darfur, far to the west, is engulfed in violence, the Sudanese capital and its surroundings rarely see political violence or attacks by Islamic militants.

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri have called in the past for “jihad,” or holy war, in Sudan if U.N. peacekeepers deploy in Darfur — most recently in a September video by al-Zawahri. Osama was based in Sudan until the late 1990s when the government threw him out, but there has been little sign of activity by the terror network in the country recently.

Last year, a group calling itself Al-Qaeda’s branch in Sudan claimed responsibility for the slaying of a Sudanese newspaper editor accused of blasphemy for articles run in his Al-Wifaq newspaper. It was the first time a group in Sudan claimed allegiance to Al-Qaeda, but Sudanese officials have said the claim was fake. — AP

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