Gunmen in Sudan kill U.S. diplomat

The last time an American diplomat was killed there was in 1973.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — An American diplomat was shot and killed early Tuesday by gunmen in a passing car who cut him off as he was being driven home in Sudan’s capital. Sudanese officials insisted it was not a terrorist attack but the U.S. embassy said it was too soon to determine the motive.

The diplomat’s Sudanese driver was also killed in the shooting.

The Sudanese government often drums up anti-Western sentiment in the press. But attacks on foreigners are rare in Khartoum, where an American diplomat was last killed in 1973.

The diplomat’s family identified him as John Granville, 33, originally of Buffalo, N.Y. He was an official for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, working to implement a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan’s north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war, the family said.

He was being driven home at about 4 a.m. when another vehicle cut off his car and opened fire before fleeing the scene, the Sudanese Interior Ministry said.

The diplomat’s driver, 40-year-old Abdel-Rahman Abbas, was killed. Granville initially survived the attack with five gunshot wounds to the hand, shoulder and stomach. He died after surgery, said Walter Braunohler, the public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum.

The USAID Web site, in information posted before his death, said Granville was working in southern Sudan on a program to distribute radios and had previously worked on other aid projects in the south.

In Buffalo, the diplomat’s uncle Daniel Granville said the family was too shaken to comment.

Buffalo-area congressman, Rep. Brian Higgins, said Granville knew his work put his life in danger.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said the incident was “isolated and has no political or ideological connotations” and pledged to bring the culprits to justice, according to state news agency SUNA.

The Sudan Media Center, which has close links to the government, cited an unidentified government official as saying the attack was criminally motivated and that there was “no grain of suspicion of an organized terrorist action.”